Most DIYers Have NO CLUE Wire Strippers Can Do These 6 Things!

so when people think of wire strippers most people just think about these as stripping wires but these are actually capable of doing so much more when it comes to electrical work so I'm going to go over everything that your wire strippers are capable of doing and I'm willing to bet around 90 to 95% of you are probably unaware of what all these things can do for you so let's go ahead and jump right in so here are some of the most common wire strippers that are on the market today and of course every single one of them has in common that they're capable of stripping wires they all also are capable of cutting wires but then after that there are some added features to some of these that some of the others don't have that you very well are not aware of but if you were aware of it would make some of your jobs a whole lot easier so over here on the left we have two of our most common types of wire strippers these particular ones are made by Southwire they have a spring on them so it holds the handles open making wire stripping very fast these Kleins are very very similar but this one actually has some added features that a lot of them don't and I'll get into those a little bit later these are your self- adjusting or automatic wire strippers these are pretty much just made for cutting and stripping wire they don't have really any other added features but when it comes to stripping wire they're pretty much unmatched because you can get the repeatability of the length that needs to be stripped and getting that insulation stripped off of the wires perfect every time so these are a really nice tool to have but not a whole lot more to go over on those than that these wire strippers here are very good these were what most people were using not even maybe 10 15 20 years ago they have a ton of features on them they're very good at what they do and they actually have out of all of these the most capabilities and then these over here I call these the starter wire strippers because this is the wire stripper that you're going to find in a lot of your stores even your grocery stores are going to carry something like this they're usually very cheap but they do have some capabilities that some of the others don't but as we go through this video and I show you all of the features maybe you see something that you like that your particular wire strippers don't have or don't maybe you don't have any wire strippers at all I'll have links for everything that you see in this video all these wire strippers I'll have links for them down in the description down below at any time you can click on those links and it will take you directly to them so you can check them out for yourself all right so these two over here are probably what most of you have in your electrical tool belts now they're very inexpensive they do a very good job and they also have quite a few features on them again the clein will have more than the South wires that I have over here so starting off with these South wires and Klein has a version of these as well you've got a lock here so that the handles can't just come apart so you have to unlock it now the spring is able to push those handles apart and of course like everybody knows we've got our wire strippers here but what a lot of people don't realize about wire strippers is you've got two different sets of numbers on each side as you can see here on this side this says AWG solid so you would use these numbers on this side if you're using solid core to figure out which hole your particular gauge of wire is going to go in in order to strip that wire properly and then over here it says AWG stranded this is for then your stranded wires but there are other parts of this wire stripper that a lot of people don't realize even exist so for instance I get a ton of questions of people ask me how do I get those perfect J Hooks that go around the terminal screws on the receptacles or light switches and that's very easy I use these holes right here but these are very easy to use all you have to do is take your stripped wire you will insert it into one of those holes and then you'll look on the other side and you want that wire to just barely be poking through the other side once it's just barely poking through the other side you then rotate the wire strippers down around the wiring like so and then once you pull that wire out you're going to have a perfect J hook every time and this is just one of those features that just a lot of people don't know about it blows a lot of people away figuring out what those holes are for because all of us at some point or another are going to have to make a J hook to go around a terminal screw and this is just quite simply the easiest and most efficient way in doing so now this is something that not only these are capable of doing but these also have the holes on them these wire strippers here have the holes on them but then these super cheap ones do not have those holes on them to make those shepher hooks so now this is going to lead us into the next feature that these have on them that I'm willing to bet the majority of you also don't realize that these are capable of and that's up here at the top have you ever wondered what the tip of these wire strippers are for they've got little Jaws on them basically but there's no markings on them designating what they're used for well for the most part those are just going to be used kind of like needlenose pliers and where they probably get used the most is if we take our standard residential receptacle here now this one is weather resistant so it's not completely standard but for the most part this is what your receptacles look like you've got your terminal screws over here on the sides and I better put this white wire on the correct side which would be the silver side when we go to put that J hook onto that terminal screw what we can do now is we can take the these wire strippers and using these like needlenose pliers up here at the top we can actually then take that hook and we can close it in so it's making a nicer wrap around that terminal screw it's making it tighter so then when I tighten this down and because we went around the screw in a clockwise Direction look how tight that is it has pulled that wire even closer to the other side basically making a circle all the way around so now we're going to have a super tight very secure and very good connection here for many years to come and not only are these capable of doing that but so are these clients as well however these other two just do not have that function on them hey really quickly if you're finding this video to be of shockingly good value if you could do me a huge favor all that I ask is that you give the video a thumbs up down below or leave me a question or comment down the comment section it really does help the video out to spread out to other people and hopefully we can help them out with this as well I really appreciate it let's get back into it but now let's move to these Klein wire strippers that have all the same features that I just showed you on the south wires but one thing that this tool does have that this one just does not is do you see these extra holes down here that open up as I open up the handles on The Wire Strippers as you can see above these holes it says 630 seconds and 8 30 seconds those are the most common size of your machine scre screws that you're going to use in electrical work so in this case this screw that I remove from that receptacle is 630 seconds and it would go into this hole right over here and you just screw it in okay it screws into that hole it's coming through the other side now but then you also have these larger machine screws that come with some of your larger or more industrial receptacles or other electrical devices and this is 830 seconds and it will screw into this hole right over here on the right they won't just push through you actually have to turn them in like as if you were tightening them down into a wall so some of you might be going okay that's great it's got some holes on it that I can put a bolt in it why should I care well what these holes do is ultimately cut down these bolts to a size that you would want them to be at so if we wanted to cut this bolt down but maintain the threading without messing up the threading on this bolt that's what these on these wire strippers are so great at doing is we'll just tighten down this screw until we get to the desired depth or the desired amount that we want to cut off and then once we're there we're just going to squeeze those two handles together and it does take a decent amount of force to do it but it will cut right through that machine screw like you saw there so now we've got this cut down to the length that we want so all I'm going to do now is I'm just going to tighten it just a little bit just to make sure it goes in a little bit more and then as I'm removing it or loosening this machine screw from that hole it's going to get a little bit tight I'm going to get some resistance and the reason it's getting a little bit tight is because since I cut it those threads got a little bit messed up but since these are threaded and as I remove it and turn it to the left it's going to repair those threads to a point as to where they're pretty much perfect and now they can be used and screwed into a box and you're not going to have any issues in doing so and so that is a feature that a lot of people don't realize that these are capable of doing and if you ever need to cut down one of these machine screws this is absolutely the way to do it in order to maintain that thread integrity and make sure that they don't get all messed up something else that both of these are capable of doing that these are not capable of doing is you see these holes down here at the bottom and then you see these gaps up here at the top and they actually have colors on them what these are for are for crimping down on connectors like these so you got a butt connector over here and then we've got a ring connector over here and of course these come in varying sizes for instance the size down from the yellow one is this blue one and then the size down from the blue one is this red one so you would just take your wire strippers you take your connector once the wires were inserted into each side of these That's when these get inserted into one of those gaps whichever corresponding Gap it goes to as far as size and again once the wires are inserted and this is inserted into the proper gap that's when you just squeeze down on it and it crims down on this butt connector here and there's a piece of metal in there that then gets crimped down onto the wires and that's what holds the wires in place now while this is an added capability of these wire strippers and these cheap ones which by the way let me just get this out of the way don't buy these cheap ones that you find this store look how flimsy these are just make sure when you're buying tools to at least buy some of some quality if you can't afford the most expensive ones that's okay a good set of these aren't really that much more expensive than these cheap pieces of junk and while these are capable of crimping down on these butt connectors or ring connectors or Spade connectors or whatever you're connecting and you're having to crimp them down I don't really recommend still using these because there's no guarantee that you crimp them down enough I would highly recommend not using these and see if you can't get a pair of these These are literally made to crimp down on those types of connectors but these ratchet crimpers just make the job a whole lot easier and you're going to be guaranteed to get a proper crimp every time so go out to your garage look in your toolbox take out your wire strippers and see what your wire strippers are capable of because these are the features and capabilities of so many of these wire strippers and like I said earlier I have links for all of these tools that you saw in this video today down in the description down below when you click on those links it will take you direct to them so you can check out each one of these tools for yourself now really quickly if you found value in this video then you're definitely going to find Value in a video that I did fairly recently where I go over some of the most common mistakes that diyers don't even realize that they're making when they're using wire strippers and they're actually doing quite a bit of damage to the wiring and creating a potential fire hazard if that's something that would be of interest to you and you'd like to learn more about it I post a link to that video right over here when you click on it it will take you directly to it so I hope that you found this to be interesting and of value to you and if you did if you could do me a huge favor hit that thumbs up button right down below and of course if you have any questions or comments still you leave those down in the comment section and I'll catch you all in the next one see you

Channel: How To Home

Views: 22,004

Keywords: Wirestrippers, wire strippers, how to use wire strippers, what do wire strippers do, what all can wire strippers do, Functions of wire strippers, How to use a wire stripper

Id: D-psDR3ZzMk

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2024