ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Another "Do You"... Wirenuts

I also use buchanan B2's because of it's rating ( best on the market) a bag comes with a 'wire-nut' tool. I finally used it on one job ( i pigtail everything), and i must agree that i cannot ,by hand, achieve the same connection.

Tom;
if you are not aware of the situation, you will, by OSHA reg's, be trained, given the PPE, and you WILL be working live circuits.

My one and only problem is in the obvious loss of tactility ,vision, and sensory perception that PPE brings does NOT allow an employee to make the call as to weather he/she feels it to impare his/her function to the point of a dangerous situation.

Do not let the powers that be snow you here, they have their own agenda. If you really read the reg's, and 70E, you will come to the same conclusion, we (the guys in the trenches) are simply being isolated from any litigation against the employer .

Sparkey,
There are very very few conditions under which OSHA permits you to work live circuits, PPE or not.
Don

Sparky,

When I ran a service call truck in California, I quickly found out what works & waht doesn't. What really works is pigtailing, just what you do.

I also found out that stab in connections are worse than useless and that crimp on connections can be a problem if the installer isn't paying attention to details, speed first quality by accident.

The biggest reason to work something hot is to take a measurement. 99.9% of the other reasons don't make sense. My goal in life is to become a really old electrician (I'm over halfway there).

I agree with you both, i simply do not agree with the wordings of some of these safety reg's. I believe the guy with the toolbelt should have the final word.

When I do use wirenuts (see the stab-in post)I pretwist and clip to the proper length.

I twist and sometimes I also tape around the base of the wirenut and onto the twisted wires.

I haven't seen the twisting tool. I'll have to get a bulk pack of Buchanans.


[This message has been edited by donles (edited 06-17-2001).]

Interestingly, on page 55 of this months issue of Electrical Contractor Magazine, there is a full page ad for wirenuts that shows an electrician installing one on a pair of wires that aren't pre-twisted.

Yep... Ideal Brand the type I use.

Requires no pretwisting, and they have a neat little wrench to tighten them with.

To reiterate: If you use Ideal brand and the wrench without pretwisting, it will look identical to the pretwisted ones when you remove the wirenut.

I can take pictures to compare the two and see if you guys can guess which one was pretwisted or not... Any takers?

Virgil;
even old dogs can be taught new tricks!

woof woof!