Stupidest Reel Wire Break Ever

[mutantmoose]

Tournament this weekend, several strips were having problems, people kept kicking sloor cords and breaking them, wires were pulling out of sockets, it was sheer hell.

An Uhlmann reel goes down. Turns out the ground side of the socket is dead. (A? C?)

I take it apart, cut back the wire a few inches, test the white wire - dead.

Cut back a few more inches, test the wire - dead.

Pull yards of wire out of the reel, and find a broken white wire sticking out from the sheath about 20 feet from the end of the calbe.

@#$^(&#$(*&

I can't even imagine how this could happen, but there's no way to cut that wire down at all, unless I want fencers to walk about halfway down the strip and then rip the reel off the floor...

Mark

[HDG]

I hope cards were being given out liberally.

[brtech]

Yeah, bummer. You have to replace the wire. Is the "segment" (cable guide) worn?

[fencerbill]

Was the broken white wire at a place where there was a previous break in the jacket?

If so, what did you expect?

You can't just ignore the breaks in the jacket. And, as I think someone else hinted, the jacket breaks are usually a follow on to a grooved guide block.

What we do for jacket breaks is, basically, swap the wire end for end and protect the break.

You can protect a break with heat shrink but only if you use Goop, or something like it, under the heat shrink. If you just use heat shrink, after a while it will loosen and just move along the wire. I have never seen heat shrink loosen and move if it was applied over Goop before shrinking. At least where we have swapped the wire end for end and have the breaks near the reel end of the cable where they are seldom exposed. We figure we get about 70-80% more wear from a wire after swapping end for end. A good deal when a new cable costs $50 and up. Swapping end for end is the same amount of work as replacing the cable and takes less than an hour when you have done enough.

[mutantmoose]

Was the broken white wire at a place where there was a previous break in the jacket?.

Nope - just sticking out from the jacket - it was like it had just decided to poke out of it's own volition.

To be fair, the wires were extra twisty inside the jacket due to several previous breaks that had been repaired. (Cut back, resoldered.) I think the wires had gotten jammed down in the jacket over time, and the stress of working back and forth finally made one pop out.

The guides had been recently built up with epoxy, and that one was in fine order.

Of course, the wire was nearing the end of its life cycle. It's just the way it commited hari-kari at the end of it's life cycle at a crucial moment that is so dang frustrating.

The trick of turning the wire around in the reel end-to-end seems like a good one. I'll keep that in mind.

Mark