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Warning: I quit using my coax stripper freehand last month and my fittings got cleaner
For about six years I prepped every RG6 drop with a handheld stripper and just eyeballed the cut depth. Last month a guy on my crew in Cleveland showed me how he sets his stripper on a scrap piece first and checks the braid before touching the real cable, and my callbacks for loose fittings dropped to zero on the next 40 installs. I also started wiping the dielectric with an alcohol pad before I crimp, which sounds dumb but the connector seats better. The part I did not expect was that checking the braid takes maybe five extra seconds per drop. What are you all doing to keep braid from folding back under the connector?
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troy_sanchez812d ago
Man, this is the same thing as checking your bit depth on a drill before you punch through a cabinet, right? Five seconds of setup on scrap saves you from wrecking the real thing, and people still skip it because it feels like wasted time. I see it at the gym too (guys load the bar up before checking their form on an empty one) and in the kitchen (nobody tests the heat of the pan before dumping in the eggs). There is something about doing a quick dry run that our brains just refuse to count as real work. Your braid check is that dry run. Folding braid usually means the blade is dull or the depth is off a hair, so the scrap test catches it before the fitting eats the mistake.
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