in this video presentation i'm going to go through the skills in order to clip twin and CPC cables
always called on site twin and earth cables to a wooden board now it might be in your college or in
a wonderful position that when you every time you go and get some cable you cut it off a new drum
and obviously it's nice straight and flat already at Tresham college we use second-hand
pieces of cable so it's really important that the preparation before clipping is done
in order to get it flat to the board and that's super important for me in those early stages when
we're doing lighting circuits and socket circuits and it's no different than in the real world when
you've drilled joists and you're pulling cables through them before eventually dressing them
into position so you get down to switches and sockets now it might be in the real world you
don't have to get it quite as flat with quite precision that we're going to do here between
our clipping distances but if you've got high standards at college flat equally spaced clips
and you transfer your knowledge into industry it doesn't matter if you drop your standards
a little bit so we've got our cable here an off cut so again second hand piece of one millimeter
square twin and CPC cable as if we're doing the lighting circuit we've got our side cutters
we've got a tape measure and we've got a hammer and we've got our clips and our clips being uh
one to one point five millimeter squared twin and earth clips okay so it's still going into a
nerf clips on sites even though we know they're twin and CPC so the problem with these are is
obviously they're fraction big for one mil and we are using one millimeter squared cable so we can't
always get them as precise as we would like with our clipping but that's what we're going to use in
order to support the cable onto the wooden board so the first thing we've got to do is obviously
find our cable and get it to a rough length so i'm going to go between a fictitious light switch
box and the top of the wooden board so if i cut it about there we've got our cable and we've got some
spare that somebody else can use in the workshop so i've got it cut approximately to length but we
can see if we went to try and attach this now to the surface that it's doing its own thing
it's a little bit of a pet snake at the moment so i'm going to need to start working with this
before i start the clipping process and this is important this is the bit the students often
take seconds over where taking a few minutes can be a lot better you might be at your college
you're expected to wear gloves and that's fine as well so i'm not going to gloves on for this
it just makes the demonstration easier to see what i'm doing with my hands than wearing black gloves
we've experimented with that in a previous take so i'm going to take the cable and i'm going to
start passing it through my fingers and try and straighten it out so it feels a little bit warm
as i'm pulling it i'm untwisting it as well so i'm trying to get it so it lays flat in one direction
and i'm going to do this several times so imagine this has come out of a ceiling and coming down
you'd be doing the same thing you'd hold on to the cable and you'd start unbumping it and moving
out the wiggles of the cable before we start so a couple of three times through your hands
and then we can start the dressing process well straight away now we're in a little bit better
position still a little bit of a twist in it but we're in a slightly better position in order to
start working with it working on a wooden board gives you a few advantages than being on site is
probably because we've got a straight edge so we can work from one of our edges across with
our measurements and that's what we're going to do here as well we'll start the top of the board and
this is the important bit to see this is where i take four fingers and a thumb and i start to press
the cable against the surface in order that i can get it to stick to the surface before i clip it
and this is a bit again students don't work on for long enough because it does make your
thumb feel rather warm especially when you're not wearing gloves so four fingers and a thumb
and i'm going to hold the cable and now i'm going to press it into the board as i come down there
so we can see that being pressed into the board now if i stop in that position there even with
one run through we can see the cable is pretty much stuck to the board so we're going to come
from the top hold on to it four fingers underneath my thumb is pushing that cable
into the surface that could be a brick surface it could be a block surface it could be a wooden
surface and i'm going to do the full length of the cable so i'm just going to move the cable up
and i'm going to carry on again pulling it into the surface i'm going to keep doing that so i'm
going to bring it around again and i'm going to go again the more times you do this the more chance
you have of getting your cable super flat to the surface so if i hold it there we can already see
that we're starting to get that flat down this slight twist in it because obviously the cable
is going to roll around as i pull it down so we'll just see that once more really close in
i'm going to take my fingers underneath my thumb on the top i'm pressing in one motion i'm moving
down the cable i'm not stopping and look pressing against i'm just pulling it down in one motion
all the way down the cable and you continue to do that until you're happy that you've got that cable
flat for its full length so there we go that's pretty much flat now before we start unfortunately
when you let go of it it does do its own thing so it will flip out so it's important that we get it
so we're happy with it to go into the accessory so i'm going to keep dragging it down
so i'll pop it into the light switch so cable goes in i don't want to drag it down
i want it to at least be as long again past the box before i do anything else so that's
it in there i'm going to come back and see i've got plenty on the length but you can see already
it's still not straight and flat even though i've been dragging it like crazy in order to do so but
we're in a better position because i'm holding it there and it is trying to lay flat to the surface
so what i'm going to do next is i'm going to measure the position from here
to this edge i'm going to use this edge to work from so i know where my clip distance is so i
want the center of the cable to be measured from this wooden end here and the center of that cable
is a 195 millimeters or 19 and a half centimeters so that's the center there so if i use the same
thinking at the top here i come across i know the center of my cable needs to be at
19 and a half centimeters so let's have a look at that there so roughly so bring my cable through
and what i'm going to do is try and position that first clip in place
so we're going to come across we're going to come 19 and a half to the center of the cable
i've worked off that edge so it's approximately the right position
and then i'm just going to put a clip in there to hold it this will be the only clip at the
moment i put fully into position so i've got that one and i'm going to clip that one down
so that clips it fully into position i will check it so i bring my tape measure back in
and we are sorry look we are not quite 19 and a half mil so we're not quite so
we needed to come over slightly further i'll put that clip in that's obviously a mistake
so it gives me golden opportunity to show you these these are my cable pincers you hold on to
the nail squeeze really tightly and i just roll it out the way so it just pulls out that clip
and there we go we've moved it out position we can bring another one in
and again just going to check it we want to be 19 and a half for me
across which is approximately there and we can put that clip in so we're in the right position before
we start so knock this one in all the way in for this one what i should have done is pinned it
like that and i should have just checked it again to see if we're at 19 and a half okay we're happy
with that for 19 and a half if we want what you do is end up wiggling it back out and you can move
your clip if you wanted it a fraction further over so we just move it into a new position
okay so top clips in see what i say about them just being a little bit loose because obviously
these are for one and one five so of course when you're using one mil you've not got it quite as
tight as you would like in position but our first clip is fully in and we're going to do the same
process again four fingers and a thumb and you're gonna drag but i'm holding on to the cable as well
so i'm gonna drag it the full length of my run in order to get it down to the bottom now if we
hold it there we can see we're not in a bad position after doing that just the once
that's pretty flat we go again hold on to the cable tops in and pull it out
the full length of the run down to the bottom and we do this several times until we're happy with it
so we're going to do that so i'm pretty much happy with the top section
so this bit here is nice and flat i'm happy with that so what we're going to do now is work out
the distance for our clips well we know the first one's in position here right at the
top of our board and our last clip is going to be about 15 mil away from our accessory
so our last one is going to be about here so i'm going to put my last clip there and again
i can work it out off the board if i do my 19 and a half centimeters i can see that we're
into that center position just over to there so that's the position the cable is hold that one
about 15 mil away from the box this is where students normally just smash the box for me
i'm just going to pin that one down so when i say pin it i mean not drive the
the nail all the way in because i need to know for measurement purposes what that is
so i'm going to measure the distance between these so we go between here and here
and that is measured out at 100 centimeters or a thousand millimeters so what i say to
my students is i want the clipping distance to be no greater than 300 mil between them
now we can use the on-site guide to work out clipping distances i'll leave a link
in the eye above my head to a video i've made on that but in those early days i set
the measurement so we're saying maximum 300 well if we said 300 here we'd go 300 300 300 and then
we'd only have a hundred mil for the last one well i want the clipping distances to be even
so i think we can all work out that if we can have four clips in here if we divide a thousand
by four we get 250 mil for our clipping distances so 250 millimeters so 25 on there
we put our clip into position and we now know that this is 19 and a half
we move it across to there and then what we're going to do is we're going to pin that one down
i'm just going to pin that one okay that's in position i'm going to go again
i'm happy with this cable at the minute so i could i could go again with my fingers underneath and
i could keep dragging beyond the measurement i need and then we can come back and we can go 25
so pop our clip into position check they're the same yep before we do anything else we
said 19 and a half hopefully the wood straight and again we'll pin this one into position
so i'm just going to gently tap it in
okay and we go again hold on to the cable drag your fingers
all the way down now it might be that you want to get rid of this one now so we might just want
to take that one out you could do it with a set of side cuts so you could just take it and just
wiggle it out and just remove that clip so we don't want that one just yet and we go again
and we get our 25 we bring out a clip we drop it into position i'll be happy with it
so check we're happy if we're not not quite happy with that so i'm going to measure that again i'm
going to take my fingers and i'm going to drag way beyond the 25 all the way down so measure 25 again
get to 25 put on a clip and then we look at it again if we're happy with it
we can measure the 19 and a half which that is and we can put that clip into place
so we go there
again just pinning it you'll see in a minute why pin it so last one we should find that this is
worked out pretty good so hopefully we've got our 25 we have it's just short of the box so exactly
where we thought it would be it's always the worst bit of college to do because obviously you're
now into a box so you're going to have to be a little bit clever the clip will help hold it but
the further you can get down into position doing that dragging technique the easier it will be to
get it flat and straight happy with that one and again about 15 mil from the box i could just check
it if i wanted to but i'm going now with my eye line and i'll show you what i mean in a minute
so if we come back around here if we come down and look up the of the actual cable we
we're now looking to see if it's straight so it does look as if there's a little bit
of an issue here that this clip might not be in the right place so we can move our cable we're
not happy with the cable we can move that you see it's a little bit of a wiggle or
if we weren't happy with the clip as i come around and take a look if i wasn't happy with
that clip in position i could wiggle it out and move it now it might be that it's that one there
let's just have one more look no that's this one here so what i'm going to do so if you watch this
i'm just going to wiggle that one out and i'm just going to move it a fraction further over
so i think it needed to be moved just a fraction i can re make sure we don't go back in the same hole
pin it come back down now take a look down there i think now that that's pretty much dead straight
equal distances we've had the luxury of a line here to measure from and we've
used that we've dragged it nice and flat and only now would i say to my learners
you can send those nails home in other words you can clip that cable down i tend to get excited
because i think they're nearly finished what we don't want to do is hit our cable and remember the
hammer is held at this end loads of students when i see them clipping or holding the hammer above
here we need to handle it right down here and then we can just send those home so we clip these in
and then be very careful at the bottom this way you need to go a bit slower
and then you're ready to show your instructor your cable whether it's straight also it's
flat to the surface so when i tap it i don't expect to hear the cable flap up
okay so when we're going down it you don't expect to hear the cable flap up so
a poorly clip cable would tap against it as you're doing it you'd hear it tap because it actually
isn't sitting flat now sometimes they take a piece of paper and they try and say can they
get the piece of paper under your cable okay in order that they suggest it is flat now i think for
cables that's one millimeter squared clipped with one to one point five millimeter square
cable clips that is clipped nice and um flat to the surface it's all about the preparation and
in my next video which is over there i'll show you how to put a bend in the cable