ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Wirenut techniques

Which one was pretwisted and which one was not? (Short or long pair)

(Don't flame me for the colors of the wires, I thought the twist would show better with the contrast...)

I used this technique on one pair of wires:

I stripped each wire 1-1/4" and pre-twisted with the lineman's pliers (my first pair... Ideal brand, not "Kleins") Then I snipped the bare twisted ends back to about 5/8" and installed the yellow WireNut by hand until I could tighten no more, then removed it...

On the other pair, I stripped 5/8" off and installed a yellow WireNut by hand three turns, then tightened it an additional 8 turns with the yellow "Ideal WireNut Wrench". Then I removed the wirenut for the photo.

Can you tell which one is which?

Please note:
The pretwisted version only had three scratch lines in each wire from the WireNut spring, whereas the one done "my way" has 9 scratches where the spring grabbed. Three times as many...

Also, viewing into a light, there are voids between the wires on the pre-twisted version, none on "my way"... It's all about contact area and pressure, folks... (With a Cu to Cu connection...)

Oh yes, and if one used improper care when stripping the wire (and they "ring" it even just a little) the wires may break when done "my way"... but I've never had a wire break in many years with the way I strip wires. (Notice the only non-Ideal brand tool is the strippers... Hey I think Klein's are better... I'm not Ideal crazy!)

How about a picture and 1000 words! (sorry)



[This message has been edited by sparky66wv (edited 08-28-2001).]