I didn't mean "break them in" like you think I did. What I meant is that I cannot wait to get some good use out of them. I am sorry if I mislead you down the "snake oil" path. Hehe
edwelly - This is how I cut the cable:
1. Measure a 12 ft length of the Cat5 cable (this is the cable with the outer covering still over the four 24 AWG twisted pairs).
2. Once the 12 ft length is measured; measure and cut 11 more lengths just like the first one. For a total of 12 lengths of Cat5 cable (with the outer covering still over the four 24 AWG twisted pairs).
3. Take three lengths of the cut cable and braid them together (you will end up with about a 10.5 ft length of braided cable). I left 1.5 ft on each end of the cable unbraided so that I had plenty of cable to work with when I strip the ends.
4. Once you have braided the first length of cable you should have 9 lengths of 12 ft cable left. Take three lengths and braid them together like the lengths in step three. Now you have six lengths left; take three and braid them together and then braid the final three lengths together.
5. After all of this, you will end up with four individual braids of cable that are each around 10.5 ft long.
6. Next is the part where you actually strip the outer covering off of the Cat5 wire and use the small 24 AWG twisted pairs. The cable that I bought was white on the outside and on the inside consisted of four pairs of 24 AWG wire. The inside pairs were colored as follows: green-white, orange-white, blue-white, purple (brown)-white. The wire that I bought had bonded pairs so the only hard part about stripping the wire is seperating each of the bonded pairs. Since I was going to be using the small 24 AWG wire as a brace to hold the larger braided strands together I went ahead and cut a 15 ft length of Cat5 cable and stripped the outer white covering off of it to reveal the small paired wires inside.
7. So after I stripped the outer white covering off of the Cat5 cable, I seperated the small paired, colored wires. There were four of them, but I only needed one more strand to braid together my other larger braids (remember, the big white braids). So to add some color to the cable I chose to pair the green with the brown and the orange with the blue.
8. Then I put two of the large braided cables in my clamp and also fastened the two bonded pairs (I treated the two bonded pairs as one individual wire) in the clamp. Then I braided them and tried to make the braid as tight and neat as possible.
9. Once the cables were all braided I taped up the ends to fasten them together until I have time to strip off the white covering and seperate all the individual wires into two sets of wires (one set is the white wires and the other set is all the colored wires; for me the white wires are twisted together and this is the negative side and the colored wires are twisted together and this is the positive side).
I know that is very long and probably overkill for everyone, but I was bored. I hope this helps and if anyone has any questions just drop me a PM. I will post some pictures of the final product once I get all my connectors and heat shrink on the cables. Cheers!!
