SWA from hell!

Knobhead · Jan 9, 2012

Got a call this morning from a mate to go and have a look at two 4-core 35mm SWA’s. He was supposed to move a panel and remake the supply using the existing cables. He’d seen the cable as installed, it looked like it had been made off with an axe. No wonder he wanted a hand, there was no French chalk in between the cores. It took me nigh on an hour per cable to carefully whittle away at the inner insulation and serving to get just enough length on the cores to make them off. While I was doing my woodcraft whittling he’d made off 20 other cables.

Anyone else come across cables where the cores have had no chalk between them and they’re all glued together?

Deleted member 26818 · Jan 9, 2012

Ocasionally.
I just hit them with a lump hammer, untill they start to move.

Knobhead · Jan 9, 2012

Tried that, these were well stuck together. It didn’t look the prettiest of terminations but it’s hidden by the live terminal guard.
I’ve had them over the years and your “hit it” method usually works, but not this time.

johnboy6083 · Jan 9, 2012

ive had it on a few jobs. I was on a shopfit, and was stripping some flex. No matterhowhard itried, every time i scored the sheath, and bent to split it, it kept splitting the sheath on the inside cores. I tried again, and it was the same. I was getting annoyed, thinking it was my fault being heavy handed with the cutters, but when i looked about, the other 2 lads were having the same problem. In the end, we were taking 10mins to carefully striop an end, without knackering the innercores.

JD6400 · Jan 9, 2012

We have had the same with brand new swa from cef several time's , come to think of it we have had it from newies as well .
As for the flex Denmans where stocking some of that stuff about 6-7 years ago , ended up binning it in the scrap pile as it just could not be deemed safe to use .
The more worrying thing is they all had the appropriate standard marks on them and were totally legitimate !

Engineer54 · Jan 9, 2012

Some of these problems with PVC cables can be down temperature. We've had several batches of different cables that have been fine in normal ambient temperatures, but when temperatures drop to anywhere near 0c,...say around 5c, they become real pig's to strip/terminate....

Knobhead · Jan 9, 2012

The cable must be over 20 years old. The inner serving was bonded to the core insulation. If I was in the boy scouts I’d have got my woggle whittling badge.
With some heat shrink over the cores and over the crutch it looked a half reasonable job. They tested perfectly so Dave my mate was quite happy with it.

skydog23 · Jan 11, 2012

The Chuck Norris swa maybe ?
Or some of the early fake cable, who would have got away with it " if it wasnt for them meddling kids found out."
i know what you mean,and dont mean to joke, i just put it down to quality control or the night shift sleeping and not putting the mag ox in, it might have been that bad when the original installer put it in when his mate was doing more than him too.
but sometimes we just persist to get the job done, thinking its just us ?
if all tests prove good, we are done.