I remember the first time I installed a connector on 213 in the presence
of my father.
I grabbed the big side cutters and commenced to it until he saw what I
was doing.
"NO, NO, NO!!"
He handed me a pair of cutters specifically designed to cut coax cable
cleanly and flat.
The jaws of these cutters are curved and will cut any size of coax up to
about an inch in diameter without crushing the cable center conductor
insulator behind it. As long as they're sharp they make a clean cut all
the way through the cable in one move.
I have moved to crimping all my coax now and I think the key to a good
crimp is making sure the center conductor and insulator are not deformed
and measuring things accurately. I've never been able to pull one off,
even locking the connector in the vice and pulling on the cable.
On 9/6/2015 2:52 PM, Roger (K8RI) on TT wrote:
When it comes to cutting the center conductor of 8X, or any of the RG
series including LMR 400 and 600, I use a pair of contoured, flush
cutting side cutters.they are just large enough to fit over the jacket
of LMR-400, with work". Still, I find that the fine wires of the 8X
cable are so easily displaced, that I've made it a standard practice
to roll the small center conductor between my thumb and fore finger
with a slight pulling motion. This tightens those fine wires into as
small a "round" shape as possible, but as Gerald said, "It's still a
tight fit. The crimp connectors appear to have the tip of the center
pin swedged down to where the 8X center conductor just fits. If I
even bump the end of the center conductor, it's back to the thumb and
fore finger operation.
--
R. Kevin Stover
AC0H
ARRL
FISTS #11993
SKCC #215
NAQCC #3441
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