Bought a cheap coax stripper online and it cost me a whole morning

I grabbed one of those $15 strippers from a random site last month thinking it was a good deal. The blade was dull right out of the box and it kept nicking the center conductor, causing signal issues on every other fitting. I had to redo three jobs from that day, which set me back about four hours of work. In my experience, that little tool probably cost me over $200 in lost time. Has anyone found a brand that actually holds up without breaking the bank?

2 comments

2 Comments

willow_ellis23d ago

Ugh, that's the worst. I had a similar thing happen with a cheap crimper for RJ45 connectors. The jaws were so out of alignment it crushed the plastic tab every single time. I went through a whole bag of connectors before I gave up and just drove to the hardware store.

gavin_kim323d ago

Yeah, that plastic tab is the worst part to mess up. What I do now is always test the crimper on a single connector with a scrap piece of cable first, before I even touch the real run. If it crushes it, you know right away the tool is junk and you saved the rest of your connectors. A lot of those cheap ones just can't keep the dies parallel.