ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Pigtailing vs. Wiring-thru normal outlets

So, I have been fiddling around on the bench with some push-in connectors for a while now and I am surprised to find that solid copper wires from 18 to 12 AWG are fairly easy to loosen and work out of the connectors holes, while the same gauge tinned stranded wires seem almost impossible to remove once installed. Apparently, the harder you pull, the more the connector tang bites down into the solder, and since the wire is stranded, it doesn’t rotate very much inside the connector when twisted, where as the solid wire is too stiff to allow the tang to bite down enough to prevent it from being working out of the hole.
I don’t l know how this translates into actual use in the field, but I still found it interesting.
The ones I've tried don't have any kind of push-in or lever style release on them, so I assume that they are for one time use.

KJ this starts to sound like the perfect device for pigtailing. The stranded pigtail will be the only one that really moves around much once you stuff the solids and splice device in the back of the box. If you took one twist on the solids before you started stuffing it they wouldn't really move relative to the splice. The only problem I see is with dimmers and such that come with a built in pigtail. You would be cutting the splice out any time you had to replace it.

I've got to get some of those.

I suppose they could be, but if these are indeed the future of electrical splices and device connection, this is really going to be a major readjustment for someone like me. Mainly since I’ve spent the better part of the last few decades trying to avoid using this type of connection because of the associated trouble I’ve seen with them, so it’s kind of strange to now see this method being lauded and widely embraced.
I guess my first thought is in regard to troubleshooting and testing. At least with a traditional wirenut, you can just spin it off and untwist the wires if need be to separate them. I suppose you could use those long, needle like backprobe type test lead adapters for Molex connectors, to probe the connector holes, instead of just cutting them off.

Wago connectors actually have tiny holes for needle probes on the end opposite to the wire openings.

I was 100% set on using traditional "choc block" style connectors until I first had one of them melt down two years after I wired it myself (noticed the fizzling noise coming out of a box in the dining room) and then encountered some that wouldn't grip the wires no matter how hard you tightened the screws. That got me started on alternatives, first Voltomat (big box store brand, most likely something else relabeled) and then Wago. I completely wired a friend's place with those a few years ago (the same place where I had the bad-out-of-the-box choc blocks) and when I did some additional work this year all connections were perfectly fine. The only huge trouble spot I found was an older outlet where a Polish guy had managed to stuff a folded wire (long run stripped just an inch and folded over) into a terminal only rated for one wire... that did cause a minor meltdown.

BTW, does anyone need a few boxes of ancient Hi Scale wirenuts?
I got to salvage the contents of a barn that apparently once belonged to an electrician and found 4 boxes of those, fairly surprising here in Vienna. Labeled in English, designed for AWG wire, manufactured in New York.