How to properly wrap cables. A/V and cable techs are super anal about this and it takes just a few minutes to learn, it will change your life.
Cables should never be coiled in the same direction. It creates kinks when unwound and make it extremely likely for knots to form (ever leave your headphones in your pocket?).
If a cable isn't being installed permanently it should be "wrapped" using a technique called "over-under". Hard to describe in text, so here's a video:
Personally I disagree with his method, what I do is do the "over" loop by placing my palm over the cable, and on the under loop, put your palm under the loop. Then when you pull the loop to your fixed hand, you always keep your palm down when laying it. Very quick way, eventually becomes fast with practice. Also useful to unroll kinks from the cable when you wrap it, and always tie the bastard off because if one end falls through you'll get knots.
I don't think this is the most important thing out of all things you can learn in a full hour, but it is easy enough and not well known enough that I encourage you to keep spreading the message.
My father in law was very surprised when I could just walk away holding one end of the coiled garden hose and it uncoiled itself neatly with no kinks. The trick was, of course, that I was the one who wrapped it this way the day before!
The principle that induce this technique is that every time you create a loop in one direction of a cable, you twist the cable, the exact same twist that would have occurred if you held a cable with both hands and twisted one side (as if you were squeezing water out of wet cloth.
This technique as well as figure 8 with I use on guylines (when hiking with my tarp), create a counter clockwise twist for every clockwise twist, thus eliminating the tension that causes cables/guylines/ropes to eventually tangle up.
I’m also a fan of the chain sinnet[0] (or daisy chain) - works really well for storage, including semi rough handling such as tossing in the trunk...
Here is another guide [1].
Note that for longer lines, it is helpful to first fold the line in half to shorten. Also works great for extension cords since both the male/female end are handily together [2].
Wow. I was super skeptical about this thread and clicked on it "just in case I'm missing something". I was. As a nomadic developer, I'm always coiling my cables and I am always cursing my cables because they get tied up or ruined. Now I know it's me! Thank you!
Oh yeah. I've seen numerous extension cords that just twist into an unrecognizable mess after a few weeks because of internal stress, in the hands of folks who don't know better. My own cords, of similar build quality from similar big-box stores, last decades and still coil and lay like new.
+1 I did stage work when I was younger and this was one of the most valuable things I took away from it.
Over-under is good for long, thick, delicate cables (e.g. mic/guitar cables). For shorter, thinner cables (e.g. USB cables) I use this technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXMG917XsvU
I have done it so much I can now do it quickly without looking at my hands, so I just automatically do it before putting a cable away or in my bag.
I now never have to detangle birds nests of cables. Over the course of the ~15 years I have been practicing responsible cable storage, that must add up to a lot of time.
Unless I missed a quick hand maneuver, the storage technique you demonstrate, while result in a neatly coiled cable, doesn't involve a counter clockwise twist for every clockwise one, thus creating tension in the cable.
For thin cables (and guylines), the figure 8 coil is a better technique. It is just as fast to perform and each twist in the cable is canceled out by a twist in the other direction thus creating less tension in the sheath, and potentially extend the cable lifetime by introducing less inner breakage points.
Thirded. I worked as a farm hand on a nearby dairy farm through high school, then six years as a mechanic before going to college. As a farm hand, you learn early how to arc weld, or cut steel with an acetylene torch, along simple carpentry and plumbing, as well as mechanical maintenance on equipment. It isn't all just feeding and milking cows. You also learn to deal with shit. Literally tons of it.
This is opening up a can of worms akin to talking about penetrating oils (PB Blaster, WD-40, ATF/Acetone mix). I've always been and over and roll guy short of 50' cables and back in the day when we had analog snakes that were nearly 3" in diameter and 200' that lived in a road case you didn't have any choice but to over/under unless you wanted to see a half dozen guys cry at the end of the night and the beginning of the day.
> Personally I disagree with his method, what I do is do the "over" loop by placing my palm over the cable, and on the under loop, put your palm under the loop.
Haven't seen the videos, but I was taught the "proper" way of wrapping audio cables when I took an audio recording class, and now I obsessively wrap all my cables that way. So much more useful!
The only cables I really deal with are network cables and extension cords and I've always just done the wrap-around-your-palm-and-elbow-method. What am I missing out on?
The person who showed me how to do it said, "If you've done it right, you should be able to do this"; and with the coiled microphone cable in one hand, she held one end with her thumb and tossed the rest of the coil outwards. It uncoiled in the air and landed in a straight line, no tangles or knots.
Basically, if you do this: 1) The cables are less likely to be damaged, 2) the cables are a lot more 'weildy': they don't get tangled in interminable knots, and expand very easily. The cables themselves remain looking nice as well, and don't get ugly kinks in them.
Ugh. Some guys take that technique too far and destroy cabling. I had some teams do this with power cables we rented out and they could take a 50ft coil of 4/0 copper cable and turn it into a kinked, broken mess with that technique and it always messed with our coil process that worked much like other users mentioned.
A lot of teamsters, gaffers, and grips did not like having to carry a 50lb cable further than they had to so many loved they could lay the cable down, pick up one end, and walk with it to the junction in order to lay them. (Temporary power, I mean).
As the one responsible for the department looking after that gear, those figure-eight cables were a nightmare because we'd have the prime experience of re-wrapping them all so that we could store them. That caused a time-pinch when we had to handle intake and loadouts at the same time.
I don't do that work anymore, but it's personal hahaha
Alternatively go buy a few of those orange plastic extension cable wrap things from the electrical aisle at a big box store (either the plastic ones that are flat, or the big circular ones with a handle). I've had them for a decade, and every year I wind up my cords on them, and they always unwind easily the next year.
Careful coiling and then securing the coils with string in 3-4 places workes well for me. Coiling should be done while paying heed to the cable's preferred direction, if there is any tension it does not work well.
>It creates kinks when unwound and make it extremely likely for knots to form
99% sure that's a side benefit not the reason.
The way the audio techs explained it to me was as a method of reducing stress on multi-strand copper inside. i.e. the reason why it unwinds cleaner is because said tension isn't there.
Cables should never be coiled in the same direction. It creates kinks when unwound and make it extremely likely for knots to form (ever leave your headphones in your pocket?).
If a cable isn't being installed permanently it should be "wrapped" using a technique called "over-under". Hard to describe in text, so here's a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpuutP6Df84
Personally I disagree with his method, what I do is do the "over" loop by placing my palm over the cable, and on the under loop, put your palm under the loop. Then when you pull the loop to your fixed hand, you always keep your palm down when laying it. Very quick way, eventually becomes fast with practice. Also useful to unroll kinks from the cable when you wrap it, and always tie the bastard off because if one end falls through you'll get knots.