In a previous Scanner Tale I wrote about my various desks and the cable management techniques used therein. Here I will expound on various cable management techniques and materials. Some are better than others and some just plain suck.
Like many of us old farts I started out my home shack cable management with electrical tape. This worked for me at the time because of several reasons. First off, it was there. I had many rolls of electrical tape, and it was always around. Second it was easy. Just wrap it around a bunch of wires and they are not going to separate.
The problem with electrical tape don’t appear until later. The worst issue is the residue it leaves on anything they touch. Recently I bought some used equipment that came with the cables the previous owner had used, they were bundled with a dozen or so pieces of electrical tape all along the length of the cables. Over the 10 or more years in place the tape had morphed into its gelatinous form and was now mostly a gooey mess. I cut all the tape off then cleaned off the cables with alcohol wipes.
BTW, these little foil-wrapped alcohol wipes from Amazon, medical supply stores and warehouse clubs are a great thing! They are dirt cheap and clean off all sorts of smutz from almost anything. I use them to clean off the nylon pads on my mice, the crud from my keyboards, the grease stains on my desk (from when I eat my lunch in front of the computer) and now electrical tape goo from cables. On my little pen knife I use to open packages these clean off the adhesive that foul up the blade. Get a box of 500 of these for about $5 and they will last a couple years.
After cutting off all these chunks of tape and cleaning the cables my hands were filthy with black sticky goo, it took two washings with orange mechanics soap to get clean. Moral of this part of the story is: DO NOT USE ELECTRICAL TAPE TO BUNDLE WIRES.
The next thing I used in the past was twist-ties. When you buy trash bags these are included, and one never uses all of them. You probably have a few hundred twisties in the junk drawer in the kitchen. Go look, I’ll wait…
Twisties work fine for temporary use, but they do not last. Remember these are intended to be used once, to tie off trash bags and end up in the city dump. I use them when constructing my shack and then replace them with better solutions when I am satisfied the layout is going to last a week or so. They make plastic reusable twisties, but these are not much better.
A variation on the trash-bag twistie is garden wire. These are a heavier duty twistie that come on a roll with a built-in cutter blade. This allows you to unroll as much as you need and easily snip off the proper length. I use these for bundling up coiled cables etc. in the garage.
After twisties I started using zip-ties. These are the serrated plastic wire ties commonly seen in mobile radio installations. They are fine if you do not intend to change anything as they are single-use only. They come in many floors and several sizes. In my house however I have gotten away from these as they would be cut pretty soon after use. I use them in the car as I do not change that nearly as often as I do at home.
Now for my bundler of choice these days: Velcro. This is a wonderful invention gifted to us by the Vulcans in the 1950’s. Actually, it was invented in 1951 by George de Mestral, a Swiss inventor. One of the characters in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode called “Carbon Creek” which featured a Vulcan selling Velcro to a patent lawyer was named after him.
I use several different types of Velcro products in my shacks:
Sticky-Back Velcro tape is surprisingly strong, especially in the wider formats. I use this for mounting things like power bricks under a desktop or a multicoupler to the inside of a radio cabinet.
Bulk rolls of double-sided Velcro strapping allows you to cut to length straps for different purposes. This stuff has the “hook” on one side and the “loop” on the other so binds with itself when wrapped around wires. You can get the smaller green vine straps from a garden store fairly cheaply, but they do not hold as well and are much thinner than the ¾ inch strapping sold in 75-foot rolls on Amazon.
Like the above are pre-cut Velcro straps. These are commonly found at home improvement stores in gray or black and are about 8 inches long with a hole on one end to allow the strap to be captive to one of the wires in the bundle. These are great for rolling up small cables or strapping together longer runs of parallel cables.
There are also available from places like LTT Store or Secret Labs pre-cut 6-inch Velcro straps, these do not have the capture feature but seem to be of a better quality. Both LTT Store and Secret Labs also sell a variety of magnetic wire management accessories that work together with the Velcro cables.
I have tried several other cable management techniques. In one build in the old house, I mounted cable guides (shaped like serifed “U”’s) under the desk to route cables thru. For smaller cable amounts I used oversized plastic straps.
For those longer cable runs, such as the antenna cables from the cabinet to the wall, I have used a variety of split-loom solutions. While these work well I have since found a solution that works even better. They call it “Split Sleeve”, like split-loom, Split-Sleeve is more flexible and durable. It was originally developed for automotive use and can be a little more expensive than plastic split-loom, but the extra expense is worth it. It can expand somewhat if more wires are added and is easier to work with. Like Split-Loom it is available in a couple different colors. It provides a better, more professional looking appearance along the baseboards and coming off the desk.
The upshot is to use what works for you. Avoid electrical tape at all costs and if you change things around a lot then Velcro is your friend.
Like many of us old farts I started out my home shack cable management with electrical tape. This worked for me at the time because of several reasons. First off, it was there. I had many rolls of electrical tape, and it was always around. Second it was easy. Just wrap it around a bunch of wires and they are not going to separate.
The problem with electrical tape don’t appear until later. The worst issue is the residue it leaves on anything they touch. Recently I bought some used equipment that came with the cables the previous owner had used, they were bundled with a dozen or so pieces of electrical tape all along the length of the cables. Over the 10 or more years in place the tape had morphed into its gelatinous form and was now mostly a gooey mess. I cut all the tape off then cleaned off the cables with alcohol wipes.
BTW, these little foil-wrapped alcohol wipes from Amazon, medical supply stores and warehouse clubs are a great thing! They are dirt cheap and clean off all sorts of smutz from almost anything. I use them to clean off the nylon pads on my mice, the crud from my keyboards, the grease stains on my desk (from when I eat my lunch in front of the computer) and now electrical tape goo from cables. On my little pen knife I use to open packages these clean off the adhesive that foul up the blade. Get a box of 500 of these for about $5 and they will last a couple years.
After cutting off all these chunks of tape and cleaning the cables my hands were filthy with black sticky goo, it took two washings with orange mechanics soap to get clean. Moral of this part of the story is: DO NOT USE ELECTRICAL TAPE TO BUNDLE WIRES.
The next thing I used in the past was twist-ties. When you buy trash bags these are included, and one never uses all of them. You probably have a few hundred twisties in the junk drawer in the kitchen. Go look, I’ll wait…
Twisties work fine for temporary use, but they do not last. Remember these are intended to be used once, to tie off trash bags and end up in the city dump. I use them when constructing my shack and then replace them with better solutions when I am satisfied the layout is going to last a week or so. They make plastic reusable twisties, but these are not much better.
A variation on the trash-bag twistie is garden wire. These are a heavier duty twistie that come on a roll with a built-in cutter blade. This allows you to unroll as much as you need and easily snip off the proper length. I use these for bundling up coiled cables etc. in the garage.
After twisties I started using zip-ties. These are the serrated plastic wire ties commonly seen in mobile radio installations. They are fine if you do not intend to change anything as they are single-use only. They come in many floors and several sizes. In my house however I have gotten away from these as they would be cut pretty soon after use. I use them in the car as I do not change that nearly as often as I do at home.
Now for my bundler of choice these days: Velcro. This is a wonderful invention gifted to us by the Vulcans in the 1950’s. Actually, it was invented in 1951 by George de Mestral, a Swiss inventor. One of the characters in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode called “Carbon Creek” which featured a Vulcan selling Velcro to a patent lawyer was named after him.
I use several different types of Velcro products in my shacks:
Sticky-Back Velcro tape is surprisingly strong, especially in the wider formats. I use this for mounting things like power bricks under a desktop or a multicoupler to the inside of a radio cabinet.
Bulk rolls of double-sided Velcro strapping allows you to cut to length straps for different purposes. This stuff has the “hook” on one side and the “loop” on the other so binds with itself when wrapped around wires. You can get the smaller green vine straps from a garden store fairly cheaply, but they do not hold as well and are much thinner than the ¾ inch strapping sold in 75-foot rolls on Amazon.
Like the above are pre-cut Velcro straps. These are commonly found at home improvement stores in gray or black and are about 8 inches long with a hole on one end to allow the strap to be captive to one of the wires in the bundle. These are great for rolling up small cables or strapping together longer runs of parallel cables.
There are also available from places like LTT Store or Secret Labs pre-cut 6-inch Velcro straps, these do not have the capture feature but seem to be of a better quality. Both LTT Store and Secret Labs also sell a variety of magnetic wire management accessories that work together with the Velcro cables.
I have tried several other cable management techniques. In one build in the old house, I mounted cable guides (shaped like serifed “U”’s) under the desk to route cables thru. For smaller cable amounts I used oversized plastic straps.
For those longer cable runs, such as the antenna cables from the cabinet to the wall, I have used a variety of split-loom solutions. While these work well I have since found a solution that works even better. They call it “Split Sleeve”, like split-loom, Split-Sleeve is more flexible and durable. It was originally developed for automotive use and can be a little more expensive than plastic split-loom, but the extra expense is worth it. It can expand somewhat if more wires are added and is easier to work with. Like Split-Loom it is available in a couple different colors. It provides a better, more professional looking appearance along the baseboards and coming off the desk.
The upshot is to use what works for you. Avoid electrical tape at all costs and if you change things around a lot then Velcro is your friend.
