Pet peeve # 364: Abusing a cutting tool to cut the wrong things with them.

A quality cutter that hasn't been dulled by abuse should not cause the cable to fray or splay at all. It's possible that sometimes one single strand might flop out of the braided twist if you bump it but it should lay right back down if you carefully twist your fingers over the cable the direction of the twist of the cable and gently sliding them downwards off the cable as you turn.

If this isn't the case then your tool is wore out or not very well made/designed for cutting cable or defective. Check it for nicks/burrs or wear with a good magnifying glass or jeweler's loupe for flaws. A bypass-blade cutting tool requires sharp blades and very high tolerances to operate correctly. If the blades are dulled, chipped, or the pivot is worn or bent so that the blades are not held closely together or impact each other as they pass by each other it will not cut cleanly.

Such cutting tools are extremely sensitive to abuse and will dull very easily if used on the wrong material or used incorrectly. If the cutter is allowed to twist when cutting through heavy material it can bend the blades away from each other or distort the pivot so they are no longer held closely together.

Usually with cable cutters such issues usually manifest as a problem when getting clean cuts on the cable housing. A twisty curlicue will often form on the metal housing coil because the cutter is too dull to make a clean cut through it and it twists/collapses instead at the start or finish of the cut. Cutting the cable cleanly is much easier than cutting the housing.

Often people abuse a sharp cutting tool by using it for the wrong things. Heavy-duty cutting of heavier steel wire (like solid tie wire) or rod is not a good idea using a bypass cutter. A blade & anvil cutter like that found on a side-cutter or diagonal cutting tool should be used instead on heavier materials as it puts too much stress on the bypass blades and dulls them or can even chip them or cause the tool to twist and bend them. The blade and anvil cutting design doesn't make as clean of a cut as the bypass cutter and instead pinches the metal as it muscles through it with brute blunt force, pushing it to either side of the blade as it comes down on the anvil. But it is much more durable because the blade isn't as sharp and the angle of the cutting edge is much less fine. Most of the force is made up for by leverage of the tool with longer handles.

My bicycle cable cutter was expensive and I bought it because I was sick of messing around trying to fix mashed and collapsed housings using a side-cutters or diagonal pliers. When it comes to expensive specialized tools that need to be sharp when they are used the last thing I'm going to do is use them for anything but the purpose they were purchased for. It's bad enough that they get dulled a tiny bit every time they are used but if used properly should last many hundreds of braided cable and housing cuts before they start to dull even a little.

I work as an electrician and I don't let anyone touch my wire cutters and strippers because all it takes is one wrong move to damage them. Tin snips are the same way. I once lent out my $12 Weiss offset tin snips to some bozo apprentice for 5 minutes who cut god-knows what with them. When I got them back they wouldn't cut anything and every time I tried the tool would twist and the material would slide sideways between the sloppy blades. They were almost brand new