...use a chop saw to cut them! My Wife cuts EVERYTHING with her chop saw. One day, I was moaning about not having the correct tool to cut cable housings and was cutting with ****s (side cutters for you southern folks), and crushing them and then having to squeeze them back into round and trim, etc...anyway, she says just mark where you want them cut. I did and handed them to her and she ran off. 10 seconds later, I hear the freaking chop saw run a few times and she comes back with some pretty clean cuts! Holy ****, I say and I have been doing it ever since, 2 years and countless cables now!

So last week, I am alone in the house for once and decide to fix up an old Huffy, yes Huffy, to sell for a few bucks. It needed shifters as the pink SRAM grip shifters were cracked apart. I had an old set of stem shifters that fit the bill and stuck them on. I then needed to shorten the shifter cable housings.

Here is where it gets ugly and my stupidity nearly catches me out. The housing was still strapped to the lower part of the frame (girls bike. I know, a Huffy girls bike!), but there is so much cable that I can almost reach the chop saw. Problem is that I need to lift the bike up a bit. So, I prop the bike on my right knee. I line up the cable housing on the saw, holding the excess that will be cut off a few inches to the left of the blade. Reaching over the downtubes, I grab the saw handle with my right hand, turn my head to the left, shut my eyes and let her rip! Let me remind you that I am standing on one leg with a heavy old piece of crap, balanced on my knee, cutting a cable housing that is maybe 20 years old with a chop saw. IDIOT!

The second the blade hits the cable, there is a BANG! My left hand instantly hurts then goes numb. I release the saw in a fraction of an instant. I actually waited a second before I opened my eyes as I was afraid of what I was going to see (or not see), and was quite relieved to be fully intact upon inspection. I put the bike down and look at the cable and there is the equivalent of a birds nest of wire sticking out of the end of the housing. There were bits of black housing all over the room and the smell of burning plastic army men hung in the air.

I am still trying to figure out the sequence of events and how my hand got smacked so hard but holy **** was I lucky. Never again!

Time for me to buy the correct tools.

I did stupid **** all the time when I was younger and I have some good true tales.

Anyone have their own stupid shade tree mechanic stories?

I've always used a good pair of steel wire cutters, and then 'fixed' the end with a file or grinder and the point of a scratch awl. indexed derailleur cable sheaths are the real pain, I don't have the right sort of snips fort hose, so I let the LBS do it. I suppose I could try my dremel with a cutoff disk.

Old Huffy . . . $5

Chop saw . . . $150

(well, you can do the rest)

Use a steel cutting blade?

harder to do shade tree when your father was a Machinist..

though we did use mother's oven to install a hot press fit, Oil seal in the rear end, of my BMW motorcycle.

Apparently the saw is suitable when your wife is using it but not you. I expect the cable you were holding go into the saw at a bad angle and the blade tried to cut it nearly lengthwise.

I once set a lawnmower on fire welding a brace to the handle.

It would have been less embarrassing had it not been in the fire department equipment repair shop.

Yes! I think the angle may not have been quite square.

As for the blade, I am ashamed to say I think there is a framing blade in there. To add to that, I have seen my Wife cut the following without ever changing the blade:
PVC
Oak
Metal
Plastic
Bike cables
2x4's
Trim
Laminate flooring

And yes, she does have stronger and more defined arms than I do (all 115lbs of her), but I have legs like Fabian Cancellara.

Sounds like the lesson isn't in avoiding a chopsaw, it sounds like the lesson is avoiding being lazy and haphazardly securing a piece you're planning to use power tools on.

From your description, your wife reminds me of Elaine from Seinfeld using the meat slicer to open her mail.

Ha! My Wife has many, many things in common with Elaine!

I was also tired of getting sloppy housing ends and having to laboriously clean them up, I read somewhere to cut housing with a Dremel.

I have a Dremel, so I decided to give it a go, using those sacrificial cutting discs. Well, I'm cutting through, and that disc decides to sacrifice itself -- of course I can't react until well after the event is over, but suddenly I find I have a little cut about half an inch below my eye!!

I still cut housing with the Dremel, but now I always

* WEAR SAFETY GLASSES DUMBASS!!!
* Try to keep my face out of the plane of rotation of the wheel, because that's where debris will most probably fly

Is she also a great dancer?

indeed. and staying out of the rotation plane of a cutting tool is always good advice. I wear eyeglasses that are polycarbonate so the safety glass thing is covered, but I really should remember to wear a full face shield more often.

Gawd I hope that's a CHEAP blade in there if you're treating it like that, and not one of these.

Well, my grandfather once blew up a car battery by disconnecting the charger before all the gas from the battery had dispersed. Blew battery acid all over his front, and trashed the overalls he was wearing as well as the clothes under them.

His son (my uncle) had to have a bunch of metal wires in his right thumb after he smashed it with a sledgehammer trying to break some rusted part or other loose on a car.

This kind of thing clearly runs in the family. I can definitely see something spectacularly "shade-tree" happening to me. So far all I've managed to do is shoot the sprocket circlip on a Sturmey-Archer hub at my face while prying it off and deliver a deep cut to the palm of my hand with a pair of cable cutters.

Hey Y'all!! Watch this!!

Not quite. It usually goes: " Hey Y'all!! Hold my beer and watch this!!"

I always put a piece old cable in housing end then cut with side cutter.