Cutting gear and brake cable housing with a Dremel

skyblue337

Hi,

does anyone who uses a Dremel to cut gear and brake cables have a recommendation for cutting discs? I use the cheapo thin "sandpaper" like ones that came with it but they regularly break when cutting brake cable housing.

Thanks

Yossie

No.

Get some cables cutters - Dremel is overkill. You may as well use an 18 inch angle grinder. As an aside, if you are breaking cutting discs you are pressing too hard. Raise the revs, press gently, it'll cut through at its own speed.

Do a search for recommendations for cable cutters on here. Park do some nice but expensive ones, but people have also recommended Halfords, but then others slagged them off, so the choice is yours really.

Rodrego Hernandez

Might work for cutting the outer cables to get a nice clean finish on the end but not for cutting the inners.

Yossie

Might work for cutting the outer cables to get a nice clean finish on the end but not for cutting the inners.

Nah - use snips and clear up ends with hand file/teeth.

onbike 1939

Use good quality cutters and insert a short length of old cable into the outer to be cut. This prevents the outer being deformed. Do try to get the cut on the outer "square" as this gives a good contact with the socket and is of particular importance with gear cables.

rockmount

For outers ....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000T9XUBI/ref=oss_product

Monty Dog

As any decent bike mechanic knows, few cutters do it properly and you stll need to finish the outers with a bench-grinder to get them clean and square - I use a sharp point / bradawl to open-out the liner after. Using a Dremel on inners is daft as it causes the strands to unravel.

marin_maniac

I use Halfords specials cable cutters for the inners. £10 IIRC, and they do a great job.

Drem to cut the outers, and it make a great job of those as well!

skyblue337

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I'd read mixed reviews of most of the cable cutters for cutting outers which is why I used my dremel. Seems it might be worth picking up a cheap one to cut the inners.

I'll pick up those cutting discs from amazon and give those a whirl

giant_man

No dremel will give you a clean cut like cable cutters. Definite overkill.

Monty Dog

..and no cable cutter cuts cleanly enough to get the end square, particularly brake outers with the spiral reinforcement.

racingcondor

The standard brown disc cutters on a Dremel works very well for me on my Yokozuna Reactions housings which are thick enough that most cable cutters crush the housing badly.

Best way to get a good square finish and no unwinding of the spiral housing in my experience.

dennisn

I would think that using cable cutters for the inner wire is a must in order to help keep
them from unraveling. It's been my experience that using anything else increases the risk
of cable unravel. :? :?

onbike 1939

Monty Dog wrote:

As any decent bike mechanic knows, few cutters do it properly and you stll need to finish the outers with a bench-grinder to get them clean and square - I use a sharp point / bradawl to open-out the liner after. Using a Dremel on inners is daft as it causes the strands to unravel.

+1
Spot on!
By doing this you can eliminate future indexing problems caused by badly cut outers.