That safety tip about never coiling cable around your hand almost cost me a finger

Old timer told me it was fine, just a bad habit people overreact about. Last Tuesday I was pulling some RG6 through a tight crawlspace, wrapped it around my palm for leverage like always. Cable snapped, wire whipped back and sliced my thumb open. 6 stitches at urgent care. Dont listen to the guys who say its nothing. That tension builds up way more than you think.

3 comments

3 Comments

allen.iris1mo ago

The real issue nobody talks about is how much a cable can store energy. You treat it like rope but that copper or steel core has a memory from being on the spool. When it snaps all that coiled tension releases at once. It's not just the snap, it's the stored kink energy.

lunah121mo ago

Sliced my palm last year doing the same exact thing, now I always use a spool.

king.eric1mo ago

Yeah that's the thing about shortcuts. We always think we're saving time until we're bleeding. Funny how life works that way honestly. It's like with anything that's got stored force whether it's tension in a cable or pressure in a situation. We ignore the buildup until it lets go. Then we learn the hard way.