we've reviewed a lot of different wire strippers on the channel and a question that keeps popping
up in the comments is how do they perform when it comes to low smoke type cables and
we're going to look at that today i think that's the nearest we're going to get to the castanets
of Spain this year Gary that's my interpretation there with some wire strippers it's difficult to
travel at the moment but i'll tell you what it is difficult to strip low smoke cables and we've got
the twin and cpc or twin earth variety in front of us here yes it is this question does pop up a lot
particularly when we look at this type of stripper here these sort of uh single action uh twin and
earth strippers are designed to remove the outer sheath in one operation and then go in for the
inner cores there are lots of flavours of this stripper around we did review the ideal one but
if you're using one of the different versions then yeah please drop a comment below as to how yours
performs on the types of cable we're going to look at today or in fact any cable you're using them to
to strip with so we looked at stripping the cables in front of us here and we put not just that one
to the test we also use the precistrip that we reviewed on the channel as well for stripping
the inner insulation around the conductors which is slightly different in this style of cable isn't
it it is yeah so you've got uh yeah the inner is not pvc it's uh it's a XLPE which is the same uh
conductor material you're used to seeing on say a lot of armored cables as well so you'll find
that can be quite tricky to strip as well quite stretchy when it comes to trying to remove that
and we also looked at the oh not that one that's a pair of pliers and don't get confuse them we left
these on the side for a long time just out the back there and we were a bit apprehensive about
looking at them what's our five or six in one well we couldn't make our mind up on that but check out
the review of that we did with Craig Gifford yeah it's one of Craig's most popular videos
Gary that's on our channel so we looked at it and i've i've pretty much fallen in love with these
and again we use these because they go to two five on there in order to strip that inner insulation
around the conductors to see if that made it easier shall we cut to the footage of the strip
so i've passed hand cam over to Gordon and i'm going to do a bit of stripping yeah this is your
world Gary i've had to fight you off using the knife but uh we're in with the ideal industry's
twin earth stripper lots of different companies make a very similar design tool and they're
used widely in industry and i do like them so i've done the first one and that is really difficult to
get that outer mechanical protection off so i'm going to do it in sections now all right yeah
we find this with it's almost regardless of the manufacture of the cable they all seem to have
this that you can't pull a large section off with this kind of stripper okay but if you're
doing sections it is easier so i think i'll do it in like three more sections you'll see look now as
i pull it yeah it just comes off relatively easy yeah a little bit of twisting action that seems to
you sometimes hear it crack and then that makes it easier when you hear that little cracking noise
yeah then you know you're going to be able to pull it off so there we go one more to go
and that stripped back obviously took a little bit longer in order to do that so let's have a
look at using a different tool now oh i'm gonna held it your favourite knife now
they've put a groove down the center of this um cable from Doncaster in order to make it easier
for you now i'm not 100% certain when that's easy to run the knife down or the third technique
you'll see so i'm just going to put a little score down here making sure i keep my fingers
out the way so i'm going to score down there here and then i'm going to go around the end point
in order i can break it off so this is a technique i probably would have used in a previous life
and then i'm going to use the traditional method split it with the side cutters
and pull the cpc through the middle or the earth whatever you want to call it
now the knife running does make it a fraction easier so that is look how i've got a couple of
fingers on it only i'm just gently pulling that down to the point in which it breaks
and that was not difficult at all as always peeling it off the conductors can be difficult
well yeah well seems to be a generous amount of chalk in there yeah that's a sign of a Doncaster
cable so yeah i didn't find that difficult at all but let's remove the knife now and do that
traditional side cutter only method so uh if i'm just bringing the side cutters in on their own and
i'm just going to split down the middle and just pull the cpc or earth whatever you want to call it
down to the point of which i need to finish it off so yep that's you can see it's a little bit
more difficult though so having run the knife down it was a little easier but not impossible
to do it's now always trying to get it off now breaking it off i found this a little bit more
tricky on this one okay but as far as we're aware it's only Doncaster cables who put the groove in
absolutely yeah everybody else you'd be hoping that you could run your knife down the middle
and that the cpc would split it yeah now in with the side cutters and round we go
and just break it off so that's more that that traditional method of one tool to do the job
it's reasonable yeah i'm not overly impressed with my end but that's good
so let's strip the inner insulation around the conductors now it's a slightly different one on
this isn't it yeah so this is an XLPE installation you'd normally have pvc in the regular twin and
earth but this is the same insulation you'd find in the most armoured cables so thermosetting
in pvc and not the thermoplastic we're used to seeing on twin and earth cable so it's always a
little bit more tricky to strip that's not too bit raggedy ends oh Knipex precistrip yeah so again
precistrip strips what others can't is the claim um so let's just see how it gets on with this
insulation yeah very neat end there and if we're getting the name exactly right it's the precistrip
isn't it not stripper so precistrip and yeah what a what a great tool yeah pop them off with no
hassle at all what am i going for next let's go for the knife i think no no no no no that's the
Knipex installation pliers so a slightly different approach they're not automatic but you have got a
two and a half millimetre cutter in the side just squeeze on that yeah popped off yeah again that's
quite a clean end as well just repeat for the neutral just to check you didn't fluke it Gary
there you go no nothing lucky about that that was good so that gives us those three options
just gonna have one more option no you're not gonna let me use it so next up let's have a look
at what happens when the cable is cold put the beer down Gary uh we need to we had some cable
chilling overnight just to see you know you've turned up on site on a winter's day it's not quite
freezing but not far off and let's see what the difference the temperature makes okay so straight
back in with our ideal industries twin and earth strippers at roughly the same length a little
bit off there as well oh i've decided to cut a few corners come on come on Gaz you can do it
can we go any smaller on the sections
yeah i'll just snip that off and forget about that one so that didn't work yeah so yeah it
really does stiffen up and we find this with lots of cables and obviously you'll see on some cables
you shouldn't be installing them below zero yeah pvc should be installed above zero um and left an
ambient temperature above zero for 24 hours if it were dropped below zero but this is at what
five degrees six degrees in the fridge we're not not at that temperature so i've gone back in with
that knife down which actually was the easiest of the the methods to do it before that little
running down with the knife blade actually made it a lot easier when i pull here so let's just
see a little bit more effort you see in my hands a little bit more effort than i had when it wasn't
cold in order to pop it off again because it is cold it is a little bit more tricky to get it off
there we go yeah that's common against most cables regardless of what they're made of yeah but
in this case yeah it looks like you couldn't use the ideal strippers
unless you're going to do it in 10 millimetre sections yeah and then let's have a look at
stripping the ends now it's cold so bringing me ideal industry ones not too bad it sort of
dragged it a little bit a little scruffy on the ends now yeah but that was yeah pretty similar to
what we had uh obviously at room temperature set those off let's come back in now with a precistrip
yeah nice clean end again and it's the action it's it there's no power needed in the wrist
in order to do that we'll come back in with the is it the five in one or the six in one
depends on who's review your watch game yeah okay so we went with five or six there we go so again
yeah clink up let's do the neutral pop that one off as well so again no issues at all with those
stripping tools and we'll go back in now with that traditional method again so if i bring
in my side cutters there's that final strip i'll pull the cpc get hold of it and pull it
and again it's not too bad that groove does help that does help a lot of the groove but
again it's all about peeling it back off and getting it back so i can just snip around there
so in conclusion then what's your conclusion Gordon i'm only working a warm building site
absolutely yeah on a summer's day so conclusion then with that one is that it is quite difficult
to remove the outer white in this case of the cables but the inner didn't seem to
matter really with the temperature did it no no it didn't uh didn't help but the the finish did
and and that's where it's just sort of strange isn't it so this managed to make a nice neat
job of well at least cutting into the sheath and it's then a case of how many individual sections
you need to remove to actually expose enough conductor that you need but it doesn't leave
as neat to end when it comes to looking at the conductors and on some other cables it sort of
yeah went through the insulation a little bit further up than you wanted to strip
yes you got you've got to be thinking if you're in a pretty much normal ambient temperature we saw
how difficult it was in cold to use the twin and earth strippers you could do it in sections and
you could get it off yeah that's that conclusion because we used the cable from Doncaster that had
that natural groove in it we had another two ways in which we could do it can we run the knife or
we could pull the cpc and they've tried to make it easier for you to strip it now and i think they've
succeeded as well have they been doing that yeah that's probably the easiest way to remove
the outer but obviously not everyone's lucky enough to use that cable it depends what's been
acquired yeah and off camera we have done this with other types of cable as well so we've done
ones without the groove and the stripping process was pretty much the same universal
so we thought we'd use the Doncaster one because we wanted to expose that groove section to you
when we think about removing the insulation around the conductors i think there was a clear winner
yeah i mean that's yeah not your knife sorry yeah i mean the precistrip that we've looked
at before and it's it's yeah the uh the saying that goes with it strips what others can't yeah
it's it's effortless and it does leave a nice clean uh neat ends to that cable and i think
one thing that we we don't emphasize or we perhaps haven't emphasized enough is actually that action
there is effortless on the wrist isn't it there is no strain at all in order to do that and
we even had my daughter using this didn't you she only got one hand if you haven't seen that
in a livestream she did our challenge wall and she used one of these having never used it before and
she made it look easy using a non-predominant hand only i think they're fantastic here i'll
put a link for that yeah if you haven't seen it i will put a link uh into into that but yeah we do
uh yeah we love the precistrip you like those anywhere we've never you've never been
clawed out of your hand since we got hold of them but it's yeah there isn't a one doesn't
seem like there's a one size fits all solution particularly when it comes to the outer jackets
these will work in certain instances certain temperatures um but you'll probably need
something else to strip the inner cores so i think we can summarize that it is difficult to
strip low smoke variety of twin and earth cables regardless what tools we've used today but as
always you might have a tool that's doing it and you're thinking well this is fantastic miss this
one out leave it in the comments below you might be using some of the tools here and you might go
to the same conclusions we have yes that's the only way you can do it and if there is another
cable out there that you've been using that you've got an absolute winner that you want
to tell us about please leave that below and we'll get back to as many comments as we can