lunaf67•1mo agoMost Upvoted

The day I realized I was stripping wire wrong for 12 years

I was working a service call in an apartment complex near Topeka last spring. The master electrician on site watched me use my lineman's pliers to strip 12 gauge and just shook his head. He handed me a pair of Kleins and showed me how to score the jacket without nicking the copper. I had been creating weak points on every single wire I terminated, probably hundreds of joints over a decade. Have any of you guys switched tools and felt like an idiot for not doing it sooner?

3 comments

3 Comments

ericj451mo ago

Man that hits close to home. Did the exact same thing for almost eight years before a old timer at a supply house set me straight. I was using those cheapo wire strippers with the little screw adjustment and always wondered why my splices felt loose after a while. Turns out I was crushing the copper on every single wire, making them brittle and prone to breaking off inside wire nuts. Switched to a pair of ideal strippers with the nice cam action and it changed everything. Now I can strip three wires in the time it used to take me to do one and I actually trust my connections. Felt like such a fool for not learning sooner but hey, better late than never I guess.

wendyprice1mo ago

Eight years? Oh man, that one stung to read. I can just picture you stripping wire after wire, thinking you were doing it right, and all along you were basically weakening the copper on every connection. I know exactly those screw-adjusted strippers you're talking about, the ones where you have to fiddle with that tiny screw every time you switch wire gauges. I've seen guys use them and the wire comes out looking all chewed up and misshapen. It's wild how something so simple, like the action on the tool, can turn a solid connection into a ticking time bomb inside the box. Makes you wonder how many other things we all do out of habit that are secretly causing problems down the road.

miles_young591mo ago

Ideal strippers, huh? I'll give them this much, they definitely cost more. But honestly, I've been using the same $8 pair of screw-adjusted Klein strippers for going on 15 years and never had a wire snap inside a nut. @wendyprice you bring up a good point about ticks in habit, but I think sometimes guys get sold on a fancy tool fix when the real issue is just technique. You can crush copper with any tool if you're squeezing too hard or twisting wrong. I've seen it with cam action strippers too, people rush and chew up the insulation anyway. An old timer told me once that the best tool is the one you know how to use, and I think there's truth to that. Maybe the problem was never the strippers themselves but the way your hands were doing the job.