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Swaging Cables

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Chris In Marshfield

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Supporting Member
Joined
Jan 29, 2008
Messages
1,704
Location
Northwest WI USA
Hi all,

Recently, we put up wire railing around our deck. It's beautiful stuff. The set that we bought came with all the tools needed, including a swaging tool for crimping the tightening fittings onto the wire.

On airplanes (talking Bearhawk here, but there are others), it's popular to buy and install expensive flying wires on the tail. But someone on a budget can have a hard time swallowing the $$$ for flying wires from popular vendors. The Bob also recommends that one can purchase regular cable from places like ACS, already cut to length with fittings swaged on. These typically cost somewhere around $20 or so (unverified, just locker-room talk). I haven't seen a prefabbed wire from ACS in person, so not sure if there's some sort of full-length tool that they use to prepare them, or if it's done more like a nicopress in sections.

The swager that came with my railing kit is pretty darned nice. When preparing the wire for a railing, you squeeze it once, move it up 1/4", squeeze it again, move it 1/4" up, and then squeeze it again, three times in total. Seems pretty similar to the way one would nicopress a fitting onto an aircraft wire. Is the tool that ACS uses similar to this or something different?

https://stainlesscablerailing.com/c...ies--for-stainless-cable-railing-systems.html

cable-crimper-for-cable-railing-systems-36.jpg

This manual gives you a quick run-down on how it's used and what the finished product looks like (four pages, so not a time waster).

https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/yhst-47913670625546/Swaging-Instructions.pdf


If I have the tool, no need not to use it instead of having to wait for wires to be fabbed by a third party.

~Chris
 
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