Editing How to cut steel braided cable

The best way to cut steel braided cable cover is to give it two or three wraps of plastic electrician's tape, give it a slight squeeze in the jaws of a vice and cut it with a cutoff wheel, or put it in a holding clamp of a cutoff saw, put a piece of wood dowel inside to support the tubing and cut it through. Don't go through too fast or the cutoff saw wheel will bind and pull the braided cable into the saw. Blow out the remainder of the dowel with compressed air.

Then there is one more way - install a worm drive hose clamp on the hose, snug it fairly tightly then use your cut off wheel. Speed up the wheel. Leave the hose clamp in place, but loosen slightly and slide on your fitting. This is a method that I find works the best of any that I have found. The absolute best way to professionally make up these fittings once you have them cut off is with a device called a Koul-Tool and it can be found in many on-line suppliers like Speedway.

After cutting, give the inside a shot of WD40 and place an AN fitting in a padded vice jaw, put a hold-down clamp on the hose (but don't tighten it yet) and push the hose on with a slight twisting motion. Remove the tape and push into place or put hold-down clamp in to place and crimp it.

Another easy way of doing it, if you don't have a cut-off wheel handy is with a cold chisel. Just wrap the cable with tape like described above to keep the threads from fraying. Set it on a solid piece of stock, or concrete works sometimes, put the cold chisel in the middle of your taped section and hit it with a hammer. It generally cuts very easily.  Hope this helps.

I have found that, cutting cable of less than 1/4 inch cleanly. Wrap the cable with electrical tape like others have said. Then take a block of hard wood (6 inch 2x2 is ideal) and stand it up in a vice. Drill a hole a bit larger than the cable about 1 inch from the end. Turn the block 90 degrees and using the hacksaw cut down threw the wood, past the hole. Feed the cable threw the hole and cut. If I need to I use super-glue in the end of the cable, leave over night to setup.

A word of caution - when using the cut off wheel, make sure you are wearing eye protection as little pieces of stainless steel will go flying. As far as bloody finger tip - sorry, you take your chances with braided cable, but good mechanics' gloves will help some.

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