In article ,
says...
Seriously, it's the cold that does it. You can get "arctic" grade cable,
which has a softer PVC jacket, but it's less resistant to damage etc.

Is that the blue stuff? I've got a couple of leads fitted with blue
cable & it does seem more flexible.

Usually, yes.

--
Skipweasel - never knowingly understood.

john reeves wrote:
This is about those extension power leads ( usually orange coloured
from B & Q etc). Quite often sold for use with electric lawn mowers.

These cables seem to have 'a mind of their own' every time you reel
them up and unreel them.

It's like a 'memory effect' they have, ( as if they are not flexible
enough ) and want to keep moving in a direction that they must have
been stored in previously.

This probably sounds like a minor thing. But the total time wasted and
frustration trying to unravel the thing mounts up time after time.

I've tried that trick sailors use in giving it a small twist every
time you reel it around your arm, but its just a bit too stiff to do
that successfully. Has anyone else found a good way to deal with
this? It has crossed my mind that this cable is just too old and has
lost what flexibility it did have once.

I use one of those cheap orange cord reels which has a handle that slides in a
track in the center of the reel. Add a little silicone spray to lube the track,
and they make winding and unwinding the cord fast and very easy. Never any
tangles.

Like this:
http://www.acehardware.com/product/i...ductId=1291467

Yup, you're right on the button. They are cheap and nasty cables and if it's any more than 3 or 4years old has vastly outlived the manufacturers expected life of the machine it was supplied with.

Best to buy another cable, though if you think about it maybe it's best to buy a new machine. It is possible to get a really good cable but they ain't cheap like the bog standard ones....

Evan submitted this idea :
Far too tight a coil ? ROFL... Have you ever seen how small
a spool of wire that type of cable comes off of at a hardware
store ?

I'm well aware of that, but it not be constantly wound onto it and off
it stressing the cable.

--
Regards,
Harry (M1BYT) (L)
http://www.ukradioamateur.co.uk

In article 4be67c01-1e03-4d20-a9e2-1df7a06ad585
@k7g2000yqj.googlegroups.com, says...
Just make sure any appliance plug/
socket remains correctly positioned, eg, 2-core shielded socket on the
supply side.

Not like the firm I once worked for who decided they needed a
Portakabin. Instead of connecting it via the perfectly acceptable
fuseboard, they made an extension lead with two plugs on it and "jump-
started" the thing.

Gave me the willies.

--
Skipweasel - never knowingly understood.

Skipweasel wrote:
In article 4be67c01-1e03-4d20-a9e2-1df7a06ad585
@k7g2000yqj.googlegroups.com, says...
Just make sure any appliance plug/
socket remains correctly positioned, eg, 2-core shielded socket on
the supply side.

Not like the firm I once worked for who decided they needed a
Portakabin. Instead of connecting it via the perfectly acceptable
fuseboard, they made an extension lead with two plugs on it and "jump-
started" the thing.

Gave me the willies.

that was common a good few years ago, the lead to my garage was like that
when I moved in, I guessed it might have been suggested in a magazine or
something.

"john reeves" wrote in message
...
This is about those extension power leads ( usually orange coloured from B
& Q etc). Quite often sold for use with electric lawn mowers.

These cables seem to have 'a mind of their own' every time you reel them
up and unreel them.

It's like a 'memory effect' they have, ( as if they are not flexible
enough ) and want to keep moving in a direction that they must have been
stored in previously.

This probably sounds like a minor thing. But the total time wasted and
frustration trying to unravel the thing mounts up time after time.

I've tried that trick sailors use in giving it a small twist every time
you reel it around your arm, but its just a bit too stiff to do that
successfully. Has anyone else found a good way to deal with this? It has
crossed my mind that this cable is just too old and has lost what
flexibility it did have once.
You mention unreeling the cable - this should be OK. If you just coil it up
then the method you desdcribe in your last paragraph is the way to go. Oh I
notice you say you reel it round your arm - NO not that way. Just form
coils by letting the cable lie in yourn hand and give it at wist each time
you form a new loop. The cable usually "tells" you which way to twist .

Bill

The Medway Handyman wrote:

On 20/02/2011 15:15, john reeves wrote:

I've tried that trick sailors use in giving it a small twist every time
you reel it around your arm, but its just a bit too stiff to do that
successfully.

No sailor would wind a rope or cable around his arm!

Agreed.

Coil it loose & twist each time.

No. Do not twist. Twisting is what leads to kinking and tangling.

The correct way to coil a cable, rope, or hose, is to imagine that
it were a flat ribbon with the two sides a different colour. Suppose
the ribbon is lying flat on the ground with no twists in it so that
the blue side is on top and the red side underneath.

(For a right handed person hold the end of the cable in your
left hand blue side up. Grasp the cable with your right hand,
holding it blue side up, then bring your right hand towards your
left hand and just place the cable onto what is already there, so
that it stays blue side up during the whole move. The action of
your right hand does not involve any twisting. You just lift a bit
of cable straight up and plonk it down again, as if you were lifting
a chess piece from one square and putting it down on another.

If the cable is stiff, a side effect of this will be that each coil
will end up with a self-cancelling double twist in it, and will most
likely hang in a figure of eight pattern. But that's the idea.

js.b1 ) wibbled on Sunday 20 February 2011 20:10:

On Feb 20, 3:15 pm, "john reeves" wrote:
This is about those extension power leads ( usually orange coloured from
B & Q etc). Quite often sold for use with electric lawn mowers.

Lawn mowers are usually Class-2, round 2-core.
I have a feeling the insulated cores inside are not laid with a twist,
or if they are the twist is not sufficient to give the cable a "self-
coiling" nature. The sheath tends to be highly flexible which prevents
a "memory" of it being on a reel so it tends to "spaghetti heap".

A comment, if you can use 0.75mm 3-core, then Screwfix do H05RNF in
25m reels for about 50p/m which is very cheap if local to you. N =
Neoprene or PolyChloroPrene (PCP) which is the "next one up" from PVC.
R = rubber which will perish eventually. Homebase & B&Q offer a range
of cables, but about three times the price of Screwfix (and more often
H05RRF). Toolstation might do some (if not, someone email to suggest
they carry 1.0mm H05RNF which would cleanup).

I think Screwfix also do cheap 25m reels of orange 1.00mm, so do not
suffer a "thorn shredded" cable. Just make sure any appliance plug/
socket remains correctly positioned, eg, 2-core shielded socket on the
supply side.

I got a load of blue "arctic" cable from TLC and made my own leads up. The
blue is remarkebly well behaved - lies flat most of the time, almost as good
as rubber flex - and (as implied by its name) also behaves fairly well at
-3C.

It's taken a lot of abuse too and come out quite well.

--
Tim Watts

"john reeves" wrote in message
...
This is about those extension power leads ( usually orange coloured from B
& Q etc). Quite often sold for use with electric lawn mowers.

These cables seem to have 'a mind of their own' every time you reel them
up and unreel them.

It's like a 'memory effect' they have, ( as if they are not flexible
enough ) and want to keep moving in a direction that they must have been
stored in previously.

This probably sounds like a minor thing. But the total time wasted and
frustration trying to unravel the thing mounts up time after time.

I've tried that trick sailors use in giving it a small twist every time
you reel it around your arm, but its just a bit too stiff to do that
successfully.


Get it warm, ie in the house and then
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j1Wdc-ymbI

Mike



--

....................................
Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out alive
....................................



Has anyone else found a good way to deal with this? It has crossed my mind
that this cable is just too old and has lost what flexibility it did have
once.

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 17:10:19 +0000, The Medway Handyman wrote:

Is that the blue stuff? I've got a couple of leads fitted with blue
cable & it does seem more flexible.

Just bought a Masterplug "heavy duty" 10m single socket extension
from B&Q. It is a nice soft flexable cable, though I haven't left it
outside yet. Hum, it's just on freezing I'll leave it in one of the
proches tonight...

I don't think it is "arctic" cable all it has stamped on it is:

"3C1.25mm^2 BS6500 MASTERPLUG"

What does that BS number mean?

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 16:57:18 -0000, Gareth Magennis wrote:

You need the double twisting method on any cable longer than a couple of
metres or so.

Agreed.

This is how the noise boys do it. They wrap a lot of cables, some of
them 100's of metres of multicore which is a damn sight stiffer than B&W
mains cable.

I doubt that you mean that literally for hand coiling, it would be
too damn heavy! 50m of heavy star quad is too much and my hand isn't
big enough even with each loop taking 5' of cable... Multicore over
about 20m is figure of eighted on the ground or more likely wound
onto a drum.

But certainly coiling 30m + of mic cable is not a problem, nor is the
uncoiling *provided* that the twist you put in for each turn of the
coil in in opposite directions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqbYy...eature=related

That is first of my saved selection of "how to coil a cable" YouTube
vids:

Though he says "no knots", if you take one of the free ends through
the center you may well end up with a series of knots but don't
panic! They are all tied in the same direction, just take an end
thread it back through the all the knots and pull they will magically
disappear.

There are two ways of doing the "under" bit of the reverse twist
loop, this is the second but looks really cack handed to me (I use
the first method).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLwwB29uQRg

This is novel, not tried it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaEv9wm6gy0

--
Cheers
A noise boy.

In article o.uk,
says...
What does that BS number mean?


http://www.bs6500.co.uk/

--
Skipweasel - never knowingly understood.

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 18:51:52 -0000, Harry Bloomfield
wrote:

Evan submitted this idea :
Far too tight a coil ? ROFL... Have you ever seen how small
a spool of wire that type of cable comes off of at a hardware
store ?

I'm well aware of that, but it not be constantly wound onto it and off
it stressing the cable.


& it's the only done once that's the issue, every time you wind akoop you
put a 1/2 turn of twist into the cable, you could of course just wind it
without twisting it as a figure of 8,
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

In article o.uk,
says...
This is novel, not tried it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaEv9wm6gy0

It ain't novel - I've been doing it with some stuff for most of my
nearly five decades. Used it as a kid for guyropes, use it now for some
cables - but usually not those someone else will have to use after me.
It's possible to screw up the beginning of unravelling it all and then
it just leads to more frustration than I care to deal with -
particularly since it'd be someone else's frustration.

--
Skipweasel - never knowingly understood.