Fishing Forum

I decided to do this little writeup/tutorial because I got sick of poor battery life in cordless appliances. And although this is not directly related to a fishing report, I thought you guys/gals might enjoy it. If the mods need to move it, no problem. I recently purchased a cordless fillet knife thinking I'd give the powered knives a try. I found that I can fillet fish quite quickly using this knife, however I found that I can do about 7-8 Wipers, and then she's done for a while awaiting a recharge. So I decided to see what kind of battery pack was inside!
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I very carefully voided my warranty by opening this thing up. Lo-and-behold, I found that the battery pack was nothing more than 5 AA NiMH rechargable batteries!
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I unplugged the battery (I'm sure they'd charge you 20 bucks to replace this thing) and found that the cells are only 1500 mAH batteries! Talk about cheap!
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Well I knew just what to do. I peeled off the shrink wrap to see how they were connected.
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Seems pretty simple. Just a bunch of AA hooked up pos to neg. So I decided to rebuild this puny little thing with some real 2300 mAH batteries. Pay careful attention to how they are connected. Heck I took this picuture so I could remember. You don't want to hook them up wrong! Could be very bad for your sanity/safety. First off, let me suggest you [url "http://www.batterieswholesale.com/battery_tips/assembling.htm"]head here[/url] for an excellent tutorial on building battery packs. Lots of good info if this is something you are going to try. Second off, do this at your own risk! Playing with solder and batteries can be hazardous to your health. Obey all safety rules that came with your soldering iron! Only do this if you are comfortable with your soldering abilities! Anyways, back to the rebuild. Next up I gathered my batteries. It is important that you use discharged cells to minimize the risk of injury. I broke out the trusty Shoe Goo and put a little bit of goo along the batteries where they will touch. Then I took some electical tape and gently taped them together while the goo cures. This takes several hours, so go do something fun while they are setting up.
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Once your new battery pack in all setup, break out the soldering iron! I would suggest one with some horsepower, as the smaller ones will take much too long to heat up the battery. Then following the instructions from the page linked above, put the heat to those little dudes!
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Once you get them all soldered together (I use solder tabs, but you can use 16 guage wire if you need to) you need to "acquire" the connectors from the old pack. The people that make these just spot weld them on, so I moved the tabs back and forth until they break at the weld. You loose a little material, but it doesn't seem to cause a problem, as there is still plenty left to work with.
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Now as you can see, I've wrapped the battery pack with elecrical tape. If you so desire you can buy some large PVC heatshrink and set them up that way, me I just use high quality (3M) electrical tape. Now comes the moment of truth! Let's drop this thing in the knife and put everything back together again.
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Everything fits good, so I plugged it in and let it charge overnight. Fortunately for me, I didn't screw anything up and she purrs like a kitten. I figure I should be able to do 12-13 Wipers now with a full charge! Still not a marathon runner for filleting a ton of fish, but I think it will work quite nicely. Now I need to pick up a 12V corded knife for my second electric filleter.

I hope you enjoyed this little writeup. For those of you so inclined, many cordless appliances (like phones, FRS radios, etc.) use cheap low amp hour AA battery packs. I just recently rebuilt the battery pack for the cordless phone and it works quite nicely. The thing will last a LOT longer on a charge as well. Once again, be careful if you try this at home.

FYI: Overclocking is a term used by some computer geeks to push their CPU's/RAM/GPU's above the manufacturers recommended specs.
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[font "Arial Black"][red][size 3] Hi there TKB, thanks for the report. i am going to keep that one close by as I was just looking at one of those knifes .[/size][/red][/font]
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[font "Arial Black"][#ff0000][size 3] AFDan52[/size][/#ff0000][/font]
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My cordless phone at home dies after only about a half hour of use. I was thinking of buying a new battery pack for it, maybe now I'll bust it open and take a look at the guts of the thing.
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Gotta hand it to you, TKB-

You're definitely my candidate for the Tim-The-Toolman-Taylor Award! TubeDude can trick out a 'toon, but I've never known anyone who could amp-up a fillet knife before!
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Wow. Your pretty good with those battery packs, bee. Just out of curiosity, which make and model is your electric knife? I've been thinking of getting the American Angler one for a while now, but the other day I filleted a small channel cat with my electric turkey carving knife and it did a decent job.
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Thanks for the nice words guys. I had thought about making it solar powered, but I like TubeDude's idea better!

Out4Trout it is an American Angler Freedom Fillet. Works pretty well.
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Thanks for the great explanation/presentation. I think the same techniques will work with other battery-powered devices, from cordless phones to radio-controlled cars. What I'm wondering now, however, is whether any of the electric fillet knives simply plug into the wall. If you're filleting fish at home, that would be easy, and you would not have to worry about batteries running down no matter how many fish you filleted. Or, would the electric carving knife that I use on the Thanksgiving turkey also work for filleting fish? I guess I could just try it, but maybe some of you have experience and can save me the trouble.
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They do make plug in knives. I've heard they work well. I got a good deal on this cordless model, so I figured what the heck. I've never tried an electric carving knife, but I'd imagine they would do OK.
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[cool]TubeDude uses an electric plug in American Angler and it works well. I've seen the man slice through a couple of 4 pound cats in lickety-split time, and he was talking and showing me stuff while he was going along, so without the chatter, he can really fly through the fish with that thing. He says he's filleted THOUSANDS of fish with the same model over like the last 10 years or so and it still works like a champ. Just a little FYI.


With that being said, however, I think a cordless model would come in handy if you were on a camping trip and needed to fillet the fish there (and didn't have a portable generator with you or one of those new Tacoma pickups with the power outlet in the bed) or maybe at the fish cleaning stations at the lake. Do they have outlets at those fish cleaning stations? I guess I've never noticed if they do or not there.
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[cool]This is funny. Guess I read (part of) your mind, TD! LOL.
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I think you have to much free time on your hands you should go fishing! [sly] Thats a very creative idea ![]
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[#0000ff]I reworked mine for energy conservation. I made it a wood burning model. Also put a kick starter on it.[/#0000ff]
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If anybody could, you could!! Ha ha! [/reply]
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TD-
I'm surprised that you haven't got your tube fully outfitted with an electric ice box and 120 volt outlet so you can plug in your fillet knife to take care of business when the fishing is slow. For that matter I think you should install headlights for night fishing, tailights and turn signal indicators for safety reasons during flotillas and other high traffic times, and a set of flashing lights on top (talk to carp punisher or fishluvr about scoring you some) to scare off the PWC's that come to close. [cool]
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Just get a knife that is 12 and 110 then you have the best of both.
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Very clever BEE! You never cease to amaze me.

One word of caution..... Many cordless appliances/tools charging circuits (transformers) are sized according to the amp hour rating of the batteries. Pushing the charging circuit could result in overheating (fire) and shortened life expectancy. Just something to consider.
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