wire stripper recommendation

What is your favorite wire stripper and why?

Best, Christopher

Reply to
Christopher Glaeser
Loading thread data ...

I like the kind with one cutter on the end which you use for all sizes of wire. Like this...

formatting link
Once you learn how to use this and can cut through just the insulation and not any strands of wire and not nick solid wire (learn the right touch), you can quickly strip all sorts of different sizes of wire.

And it always seems no matter what type of electrical work I am doing, there are different sizes of wire I am stripping with the same project.

For example electrician work on a home, might strip 8 ga., 10 ga.,12 ga., 14 ga, etc. And then stranded wires for a doorbell transformer and the small wires going to a door bell button.

But this is NOT good to use if you don't know how to use it! You can nick solid wires or cut some of the strands from stranded wire. Then if this is carrying house voltage (120VAC) and amperage, the wire will heat up and possibly break/arc at that spot.

For coax cable, you can't beat these tools....

formatting link
A couple of turns around the coax and it cuts the inner insulation, wire braid, outer insulation, then ready for F or compression connector.

Reply to
Bill

I'll second that. These are also the cheapest strippers you'll find as well at about $5-10.

Just be sure to take a scrap of wire and strip a few inches off, strip the individual wires, inspect for nicks, cut, and repeat. I'll usually take 6 feet of wire and do this in about 4" pieces till it's down to nothing. By then you should have gotten a feel for it.

- Chris

Reply to
CH®IS

formatting link

Reply to
alarman

"Christopher Glaeser" wrote in news:esqdnQXaDamc3mvXnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

I prefer to use electricians scissors on small wire (20-24ga).

formatting link
for anything larger i will use a pair of strippers similar to these

formatting link

Reply to
motley me

My favorite stripper was Lulu Watson. Because she could take your ATM card, slide it down her ass crack and give you "cash back"

RW

Reply to
Roger W

Believe it or not, Radio Shack has a similar, if not better coax stripper for under $15.

formatting link
I use it several times a week and it does the job.

Reply to
david 01

Sorry about the wrap. I'll try it again. "

formatting link
" The nodel number is Model: 278-248.

Reply to
david 01

Some people never get the "feel" for it with any tool. Sadly those are usually also the same morons who insist on crimping beanie connectors with diagonal cutters even after they have been specifically told they will be fired with extreme prejudice if they are ever caught doing it.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

There's an easy way to crimp B connectors with diagonal cutters without problems. Put the connector on the handle side of the pivot. My cutters had a flat spot there which made it easy. OTOH, I rarely used B connectors. I always preferred to solder my connections, especially if they would be hidden behind the wall.

Reply to
Robert L Bass

Because you were lousy at soldering and had to hide your work?? :-)

Reply to
Frank Olson

Yep, that was it. :^)

Reply to
Robert L Bass

Did you at least twist the wires together before using a B connector?

- Chris

Reply to
CH®IS

It never occurred to me that one might *not* twist them. I never really liked B connectors. They're supposed to be a time saver in that it's not necessary to strip the wires -- just twist, crimp and go. But I didn't trust the connection so I'd strip them anyway. The problems with them are:

(1) they're a messy looking way to splice. A cabinet with a couple of dozen B's in it looks bad no matter how careful you are.

(2) If you use them to splice recessed contacts it can be difficult to pull the contact out later without breaking the wire if the B snags on the hole. Then you have to fish the darned thing all over.

I like my panels to look really neat and organized. Each wire (except ground) comes in from the upper left corner, proceeds to the bottom, makes a 90-degree turn and goes to a point under the appropriate terminal. Another 90-degree turn and it goes up to the terminal. It might sound anal but when you do it that way the panel is much easier to service later and inspections tend to go really smoothly (those guys always like neat work).

Reply to
Robert L Bass

I've seen a couple guys from Telus (our main local phone company) just strip each wire, plug them into a B connector and crimp. Not a connection I'd trust at all. Nor would I trust not stripping them either. I strip about

3/4", twist tightly enough that you don't need a B connector to hold it together for the life of the building, and then add a B connector, either crimping with a Leatherman (always handy) or the inside of whichever pliers I have handy at that moment (they all have a little crimping feature between handle and pivot point)

Very true. I've seen one system (an 864 with 16 or less zones) with two panels. One for the panel, expander, battery, etc. and the other a foot above it for splices. One entire 12" x 12" DSC can entirely dedicated to a rats nest of splices.

The only time I hopefully need to have connectors in a panel are for EOL's for recessed contacts. I'll rarely put them at the contact just to reduce the wiring mess and need to tear the door frame apart later on just to change a resistor (ie: switch to a different panel).

In this case though, I'll often take a 1" piece of insulation, slide it over the zone wire (not common, then you have to mess with the wiring to see which zone has the resistor on it), twist the resistor and zone wire very neatly and tight... bend it back and slide the insulation over the splice... trim the other end of the resistor and wire it in. Sure, it would be recommended to solder this splice too... but the way I twist them I'm not concerned with them ever falling apart.

The only time I use these now is when it's easy enough to remove that piece of door trim. Splice it together and leave a little extra wire behind the trim. Otherwise I use the stubby recessed contacts with the terminals. Much faster/easier to install and work with later on as well. If you must use them though, I find it's best to stagger your splices and then tape the whole mess into the slimmest possible shape. Hopefully this way it doesn't snag anything.

I pretty well do the same thing, even down to bringing the wires in from the top left corner. Except that I'll have enough wire to almost hit the bottom of the panel and go to it's zone/whatever using a more natural curve. The phone jack fits nicely in between this curve and the battery fits nicely on the right side of the wiring. Usually I'll have the phone jacks wire stuffed behind the panel since it won't cooperate any other way.

The 90 degree bend thing looks great at first, until you have to change something or check something, then it all goes downhill from there. Some I've seen have the wiring come in from the top, cable tied straight down to the bottom, cable tied across the bottom halfway, cable tied up to about half an inch to the bottom of the board, run straight left or right to where ever it's going, then up into it's appropriate terminal, then when it's finished, cable tied across there too. This of course looks great at first, but troubleshooting anything means cutting all of the cable ties and making a mess of it all. Plus I don't have time for that. I'd rather spend that time making sure every staple is good and there are no nicks in the wiring.

The worst way has to be running the wiring in from the back of the panel in the middle. Unless you still leave enough room to work with later and can push that back into the wall without making a mess. Actually no, the worst way would be to run wire in from every direction possible, including through the front before you realize you need to close the door (some days are long because they're long... some days are long because you get stupid)

- Chris

- Chris

Reply to
CH®IS

Yep. I've run across a lot like that. One of my favorites was an old Moose system we took over. The wiring inside the panel was neat as a pin. There was a large knockout in the back of the panel. Behind it the drywall had about a 4" x 4" hole cut out. I needed to meter one of the zones that was showing open. I pulled on the pair coming into the panel from the wall and a literal *ball* of wiring pulled up against the knockout. This thing looked like a loose fitting yarn ball of wire. There were B connectors on some of the scores of connections in there, but most were just wires twisted together and taped -- no B, no solder, nada. It took about two hours to clean up the mess, find the open circuit and replace a faulty mag switch -- a job that should have taken 15 minutes.

EOL's in the panel? Agkkk!

I'd put them at the contact or program them out of the system. With PIRs and such it's simpler to put the EOL inside the detector.

I don't know, man. I'd rather just solder and never have to give it a second thought. Each to his own though.

Understood, but I prefer not to have to touch the trim ever once the job is done. I'm not faulting you for this but I think you'd save yourself more potential grief if you'd solder and then tape or shrink wrap. It takes seconds to make the solder connection. BTW, if you use one of those the little butane solder torches you don't have to drag a wired solder gun around and the whole deal, solder and all, fits in a pocket of your tool belt. I know B's are faster but solder is like herpes. It lasts forever.

I always staggered my splices but not so they wouldn't snag. I used straight through splicing so the end product was about the same diameter as the cable. I did so that it in case the tape should ever get loose there wouldn't be a short.

Either way works. As long as you're consistant the end result is highly "readable" and easy to service.

I used to put the RJ31X beneath the main PCB on my Napco systems. The board stands off from the back of the cabinet far enough to fit the RJ and a siren driver neatly behind with just the screw terminals showing from the driver board. That left more space along the batter in case I needed anything else, like a relay board or whatever. Napco is nice for that, considering their PCBs are on the large side compared to DSC and such.

Years ago I got a lot of flak from the IB for putting my RJs inside the locked panels. The thing is I trust the homeowner to make sure the RJ is plugged back in after a service visit better than I trust telco employees. I know, I know. How could I *ever* distrust those reputable telco boys. :^)

Not if you do the same thing every time you service it. As mentioned earlier, as long as you're consistant it'll be fine.

Sounds like somone bought stock in a wire tie manufacturer. :^)

Yep. See my comment above about just that.

Heh, heh, heh... :^)

Reply to
Robert L Bass

Yeah, I know. For awhile I was putting all my EOL's in the panel out of laziness, except for when I thought there could actually be a risk to damaging the wire (ie: overhead run to a garage). But now I only have them there for the recessed contacts. There's really no excuse for not putting them in motions/glassbreaks/smokes/heats/etc. Surface contacts are a bit of a pain to keep them looking good though, but it only takes a few extra seconds.

EOL in the panel or program them to be N/C? Same difference. Except that in the previous DSC panels, you either had EOL's on everything or you didn't have them on anything (except smokes).

I know it'll last as long as anything else in that building, so there is no second thought. Telling some new guy how to do it though and trusting them to get it right? I'd rather not.

I quickly abandoned the requiremnt for having the jacks on the outside of the panel. Other than home/business owners playing around with things they shouldn't be... is it really that hard to break in and unplug the jack within the entry delay time? Although my panels are always screwed closed, not locked (too many lost keys).

I've only had one problem with a telco messing with a jack. There's a daycare in town who needed to get a second phone line. So the telco uses the 22/4 from the jack to the demarc as their new start on this project. Re-wired the jack to have their two lines on it and left the panel disconnected from the jack.

Naturally they get a call about missing test signals (ignoring the keypads trouble light and irritating beeping), so I go there, find this mess and put it back to the way it was. Then we get a call the next day because the phones don't work properly anymore... so I put them back the way it was and leave the panel disconnected from it once again. They do have a cell backup though, which is now all they have. At the time this was fine, but these backup units have proved to be unreliable so I hope to be replacing it soon. Unfortunately though, that's not up to me.

Also, the wiring isn't just cable tied to itself. It's cable tied to the back of the panel. Making it that much easier to cut a wire while trying to remove cable ties.

- Chris

Reply to
CH®IS

I do the same thing, except I run the wire down to a point about half way between the top of the battery and the bottom of the board.

I once took a bag of b-connectors and about 20ft for 22/4, put my sounder on one end and just started clipping and crimping to see how reliable those things are without stripping.

They actually work great and without stripping I would think you would get less corrosion.

I still strip in the field though - concerned about the crimp 'uncrimping' a little and the teeth losing contact with the wire - even though the marketing says they won't do that...

Reply to
JoeRaisin

True. A lot of panels are like that. One of the many reasons Leuck and I prefer Napco is they allow you to select every feature on a zone-by-zone basis.

Reply to
Robert L Bass

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.