Use A Chain Sinnet To Tidy Cables

@Homerjay here for OxyClean!: Actually, a major difference is that the cord in the video can be easily undone, whereas the non-doubled method in the picture is a pain in the ass to undo(it's more of a "I need a shorter cord in general" thing).

My dad taught me that when I was a toddler. Used it for ropes, electrical cords, garden hose, cabling.. you name it.

Looks like a nice idea for storage or low power cables, and I will try it for my headphones. But - any power cables should be uncoiled before use as a live cable with coils can overheat when the current travels through it. I don't know enough about it to say what cables are safe to use in a coiled state, but would err on the safe side with power cables. Any electricians out there who can advice?

To those that think this is hard on cables/cords: be gentle and make large, loose loops. In 15 years, I've never had a cord fail or fall apart due to this. When a cord fails on me, it's either because I was impatient and yanked on it, or I got carried away with the razor knife...

"Let me just cut this tape off of here...oops, good thing it's not plugged-F*!&#$%@!^#^$%!@*#$*!-crap, it was plugged in."

@ribex: That was my first thought. I learned how to do this crocheting when I was 5 years old. Then one day I thought, "hey, I could wrap up this cord like that..."

And now everyone is doing it. I'm so cool! Just don't try to make a sweater out of extension cords. Er, unless you live in Alaska and need an electric sweater... TO THE DRAWING BOARD!

Kite fliers know how to use this daisy chain for looping up bridle lines so they don't get tangled.

gmark2000

My dad does that for a lot of stuff, but it looks kinda messy where he has it.

I use this knot pulled tight (as well as the monkey's fist knot from one of the other users above) to make inexpensive dog chew toys and tug-a-war toys out of rope. Tug-a-war is nice and fun with them, 10 -15 toys can be made from roughly 100 feet of rope. Using a Tennis ball to top off the Rope Toy is also a a favorite. Its durable, largely configurable, and a a nice alternative to paying 5 dollars for 1 Rope based toy at the pet store. (100 feet of rope cost roughly 13 dollars at the local Hardware Store).

XavierAjax

@32ndnote: I guess you're misunderstanding my reply, which was to the article and video titled "No tangle extension cord storage". I disagreed with this method, and suggested an alternative for everyday use. Of course there are many techniques, and depending on cable gage and run over/under may be great or may indeed suck (e.g. only a gorilla could use it to coil a 100 foot joy cable). BTW the damage I was talking about occurs not when you stretch it round your elbow but when you play out a twisted cable and then pull on one end, or hang it so it's supporting it's own weight in a twisted state.

kalachakraa

Gee, I already knew how to crochet. :|

ribex

@thegsusfreek: Oh yes, well let's just say that trying it on my headphones just made me angry. As for my spare audio, USB, mac power adapter cable, etc....I actually like it! It's even faster than just wrapping my power adapter cable around the hooks. It's also convenient as it allows you to hang the cables up. I'll probably put some hooks behind my shelves and hide several of my extra cables back there. Although the really tight loops do cause some curling in the cable,

@mfusion: Well if you coil a cord up then, yes, you do in fact have to deal with "the whole process to unwind it". This method uses all slip knots. All you need to do is pull to unwind. As far as cables go there could not be an easier way to unwind one. Give it a try sometime, you will see what I mean.

@Toastie: ...and?

I've been using something similar to the monkey's fist to store wires and cables and deal with slack.

[en.wikipedia.org]

It's very fast to do and even faster to undo (if you don't "lock" it, you can simply pull it apart and it spools out nicely without tangles).

The best part is that I can wrap up slack cable in a monkey's fist while the two ends are still plugged in.

Haven't had any problems with CAT5 or audio cables breaking after 5 years of this type of treatment. You do need to be a little bit gentle to make sure you don't put too much stress on the cable jacket. But in my experience, not wrapping your cable up causes more damage due to tangles, kinks, and snags.

Rowin Andruscavage

@Halgy: Oh man, that is funny!

dmccall

Congratulations. You've just crocheted your cord. Seriously, this technique is like a chain stitch in crocheting, but the initial knot is an Overhead Knot instead of a Slip Knot. The crafters among you should be pleased.

ClarkPit?

I showed my boss this method my first day working construction, which impressed him. Then I dropped the Skill saw off of a roof, which did not.

Halgy

@mfusion: Try it once -- you won't go back to the flying spaghetti monster of cables.

For power cords that are going to be in a semi-permanent area (for example monitors, desktop computers, etc) I buy hospital-grade plugs and then cut the cord to a decent length and rewire it with the plug.

@rockhoppermedia: Are you sure it's because of the sinnet chains? :D

@kalachakraa: Reading this, I begin to see that I haven't given cables enough thought, ever.

This is really great. I had a really long cable for my headphones from my stereo, and this is exactly what I needed.

Khristopher Ranger

Don't know too much about cables, but I do a lot of climbing and this is how we usually coil our ropes (would be ok for longer cables i imagine) : http://stephenkoch.com/2009/03/how-to-coil-a-climbing-rope-video.../ in order to avoid the sheath-twist thing, which affects ropes (which are sheath around a core) just as badly.

NinoHeron

I use my Beats by Dre, they don't tangle.

Nice in-ear phones too..

@Homerjay here for OxyClean!: Oh I see what happened. The video doubles up the cord and the starting knot is a little different.

Nice write-up, I think I saw an instructable a few years back on this same idea, with headphone cords.

dfc849

The picture and the video appear to be two very different styles of cable wrapping.

Its funny. For a summer job, I helped out an awning company, and they always used this method to carry extension cords. Its actually very easy to unwind, just start pulling on the connectors, friction from the ground on the rest is enough to just keep pulling it out.

Sesheron

I have been doing this since I can remember. At least 25 years. I learned it from my father. Of course it was for extension cords, and not an iPod 25 years ago.

Everytime I started "rolling up" a cord like this at work, or at a friends house, I would alway get a funny look. Until they realized that it was very hard to tangle a cord "rolled up" this way.

operator207

@sample032: Right you are... but in pro audio-visual and other mobile electrical work, expensive cables are usually rolled out with any leftover cable coiled loosely in a concealable area. For storage, we usually just roll the cables by hand and tie it with the loose end. Heavier or longer cables sometimes get a spool and a winch.

Well I tried using this for the cord on my headset phone for work. After a dozen tries I only ended up with a knotted, tangled mess. Meh. There's just not great cord management strategy for these things, I think. I wish we were allowed to use bluetooth headsets. :-(

kamnet

@TheCapt: i dunno, it did look like a bit of an effort

Queyssel

Been doing this for years, you get some strange looks from people

rockhoppermedia

@Thriller JimmyFromTheBlock: I think most wires run by electricians are cut to the right size.

sample032

@32ndnote: If the cable gets tied or knotted while trying to pull it from the coil, you didn't wrap it right to begin with, or you're trying to pull one end from the wrong side of the coil.

First off, whenever I can, I put velcro ties or string or something at one end of the cable, to keep it together. This gives me an end to start from. I always start from the end with the tie on it. That way I know which end to start from when I unravel my cable. You're supposed to be able to do it both ways, but in my boxes the loops cross each other so much that it's tough to tell, so I just stay with what I know.

If I'm making a cable run, and I put the coil on the floor, I put the short end down and the end I'm pulling up. It takes a second to figure out which is which, but most of the time it works. Then I can pull from the coil with no worries.

That said, I rarely do that, because over runs longer than say 50' or so, you're really not doing the cable any good by pulling on it.

I'm all over and under stages all the time, and as a result I'm always weaving in and out of support beams, around columns, across doorways, etc. I just can't pull cable like that without getting stuck on something, so I bring the coil with me, and unravel it as I go. That way there's no stress on the cable, I can put the coil down if I need to tape over a doorway or walkway, and I know how much I have left because it's in my hand, not around the corner.

DeeJayQueue

@kalachakraa: I work in theater lighting during the school year (as stated above) and we always get into friendly battles about looping cable.

Essentially, over/under sucks! You always end up with tangled cable unless you are throwing the roll across the stage (which sound guys do a reasonable percentage of the time, so it's understandable).

We are meticulous about the care of our cable, and do not have problems with stretching out the casing or disconnecting the ends. For both over/under and standard looping, you can damage the cable by stretching the cable around your elbow, but as long as you do it like a normal stage-hand, it won't damage the cable.

The past few years have seen a shift away from over/under. It's just not as good if you are pulling the end of the cable across the stage instead of moving the whole roll, raising truss with connected cable up from a roll, or dropping the end down from the catwalk.

bending cable like that tends to cause more harm than good from my experience

phayte28

@ZalmanFeardie: I work in theater lighting part time, and as long as you make sure to have the same size loops, it doesn't get tangled.

It definitely helps to have a little 12" piece of thin rope tied to the end of the cable so you can tie it off after you loop it.

Short term solution only. This method runs afoul because of cable memory and accumulated twist. Cable memory is the tendency for almost all plastic and rubber to permanently deform when it's kept bent or twisted. Once the daisy-chained extension that unrolls so smoothly in the video gets stored like that for a couple of months it won't come out straight anymore. Worse yet it won't fold up evenly again unless you get the loops exactly the same as the first time. Accumulated twist is the real cord-killer. Every time you loop a cable around your arm you add a 360 rotation along the cable axis. When you straighten it out without unlooping it the non-flexible wires inside now have to travel round the circumference of the the cord as well as down the length. Give the cord a pull and the outside casing shifts - it's now longer than the twisted bundle of wires inside the casing. Do it 10 times and the plugs on either end start coming off. Goodbye cable.
The daisy-chain method doesn't add an intrinsic twist, but it doesn't keep one from creeping in. The real solution is the over/under method, also called the California twist. Film and sound techs have been obsessing about this since before the word "geek" was invented. Nice video here:[stagecraft.theprices.net]

kalachakraa

Cool. I'll be trying this tonight on the 3m headphone cable I have for My Sennheiser HD 570s. Its far too long at the best of times.

While I haven't used daisy chains for my smaller wires, I've used this for my rope, extension cords, and ethernet cables forever. I don't know if I'd use this on my headphone cables though....*runs off to try it*

Been using this for many years. I used to be a subcontractor and that 100' extension cord can be a mofo to untangle unless you do something like this.

ZalmanFeardie

Been using this for years since I saw soldiers us it in the military on some history channel program.

Derek Bender

@mfusion: If you watch the video, it is easy to undo, just undo the last loop and pull.

@mfusion: Did you watch the video? You just feed the end back through the last loop, then pull and it unwraps itself. It's like a chain of slip knots.

olliebean

and then you have to go through the whole process to unwind it. no thanks, i'll stick to standard cable wrapping

Nifty. It makes me want to explore how electricians coil some of their other cables.

Jimmy From The Block