Extending cat5e

Make a joint that "doesn't need soldering" - then solder it :-)

Ha ha, yes. Reminds me of when a colleague and I pulled 8 fibre patches through a conduit at our site in New York and then realised we'd forgotten to label them first. Ooops. Still, it was only multimode, so easy enough to shine a torch in at one end.

Yup, yup.

Is soldering taught at all?

En el artículo , The Natural Philosopher escribió:

... find you can't get the sleeve over the joint 'cos the heat travelling up the wire from the iron has caused the end of the sleeve to shrink...

Also, those instructions were straight out of a Hynes manual. They mentioned the sleeving far too late!

Were they for a twisted data cable? Its easy to push the sleeve an inch or two up a mains cable, not so on a twisted cable without untwisting it.

You don't untwist it. You just pry the wires apart a bit and thread the sleeve on following the twist.

It is if it's a suitable heatshrink one.

But one makes a small neat mechanical joint first.

Indeed. The simple way, though not the neatest, is two interlocking 'U's squeezed tight with small pliers.

That certainly shouldn't be a problem with CAT5 cable. The wire insulation is FEP -- a thermosetting compound with a melting point of

Many thanks to all for the rich and varied replies - I have read them all!

To answer points that have come up a few times - I can solder beautifully (for those in the know, Lemo connectors - no problem), I have access to a professional RJ45/RJ11 crimp tool (and have put on hundreds of RJ11's without a single fault) - so my question really was "which is best for a sealed cavity?"

The one solution not open to me, is to pull new cables. Half of the rather tortuous routes are already plasterboarded and skimmed over - no chance that a new cable will pull through.

I will probably solder, as it's still quite straightforward to draw the cables out into the room for easy working.

This is the proper way to do it

No, that's the EXPENSIVE way to do it.

While there are several 'professional' ways of doing this, I still think that, for a joint hidden away in a cavity wall, the wires ought to be soldered, given a waft of WD40, heatshrink sleeves fitted, and the whole thing taped up tightly with self-amalgamating tape. Ideally, you should be able to swing on the cable.

naff ways of doing it also have to be explored

In message , Ian Jackson writes

There now follows a sub thread on how best to tie a noose ...

Not boasting, but I do have a large one: