The cables seem to hang fairly straight. Though the ones that have been in a tight coil want to curl up a bit. (One reason why the coils should be large...) Also, note that I am using hook and loop wire ties to try to keep things "tiddy"... On Thu, 2013-06-06 at 19:06 -0400, Chuck wrote: > Howdy. > > Are you like me in that you have a collection of spare patch cables > floating around? I have tried to get a handle on my cables for several > years. At first I just coiled my cables up and tossed them in a tub. > But the tub would always end up in the basement among a bunch of other > tubs, so when I needed a cable I'd have to go down to the basement and > sort through the tubs to find the right one, and then I'd have to dig > through the mess of cables that magically became entwined while in the > tub. I tried putting the coiled cables in zip-lock baggies, but the > largest ones wouldn't fit. > > Fortunately, I think I've finally come up with a winning idea, and I > wanted to share it with you all. > > First, I have classified my cables as either "short" or "long" and I > deal with them differently. For me a long cable is one that is > 2 > meters, all others are short. The thing to note here is that my cut-off > for long vs. short is not arbitrary; it was chosen for a particular > reason, that I will came back to in a moment. > > I have found that I typically use shorter patch cables more frequently > than long ones, so I want them to be available. Also want to minimize > tangling and I want to be able to visually distinguish cables by type -- > coax vs. Ethernet vs. USB -- and I want to get an idea about how long > they are without a bunch of fussing around. In order to meet these > goals I've concluded that the cables need to be hanging vertically. But > hanging from what? Well that's where my first bit of inspiration comes > in. I went to a local hardware store and picked up 6 small compression > springs, and then dug around in my garage and found a small board and > some clips. About 20 minutes later I had a small wall-mountable > solution. > > I then drilled a couple of small holes in my office closet and used > those little plastic insert dodads to screw it to the wall and started > hanging cables from it, with the cables hanging down, and tied with hook > & loop wire ties. > > The middle two springs are now full of various USB cables, which has me > thinking that I didn't build this big enough. I may make another one > and put it on the other side of the closet... > But that's how I am now storing my patch cables that are < 2meters long. > Note: DO NOT use anything like this for fiber optic cables, as the > springs do pinch the cable and you could end-up crushing the fiber. > > For cables that are longer than 2 meters, I lay the cable out next to a > tape measure and use a sharpie to mark it every meter. I then coil the > cable up so that the circumference of the coil is 1 meter long. This is > quite easy as all you need to do is to line up the sharpie marks. I > then use 3 small pieces of black electrician's tape evenly spaced around > the coil to help it retain it's shape. Now I can tell how long a cable > is just by counting the number of loops in each coil. > > That's it. I now have a small stack of coils for my long patch cables > and a couple of bundles of shorter ones hanging in my office closet. > > I'll send pictures in follow-up emails. > > I hope someone finds this useful. > Chuck > . > > > > To unsubscribe send to ncolug-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the > Subject field. >
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