[SpookyZalost]

Wire Splicing, methods and practices.
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So now that you know about wires and figuring out what kind you need it's time to talk about splicing.  Splicing is where you connect two or more wires together by binding the copper threads/cores.  For example you can splice a broken wire back together or splice a second wire onto the first.

There's a few ways to go about this.  First there's wire nuts and Wago terminals.  These work by making it easy to bind wires together however they have their own positives and negatives.  I'd highly recommend not using wire nuts for most things for example.  This is because they tend to catch fire and melt when an overload is fed through them.  They're also commonly found in older setups like in houses and used sorta like quick disconnects.  Wago connectors were an attempt to improve this but ideally you don't want to use either unless you plan to be able to replace stuff later on.

Wire nut and Wago connector examples.


The second method is by using the rat tail method.  this is where you take the two ends of a pair of wires and twist them together like a rat tail.  This dates back to the early days of electrical design and is actually quite dangerous in that the end can be easily left unshielded.  Wire nuts simulate rat tail setups by twisting the two together.  You can technically twist three or more together this way but this can make it unweildly as well.


Typically the above are less common with Wago Connectors having replaced wire nuts in most places but be on the lookout for any of the above three if you're doing home repair.

Finally there's the tried and true method pioneered by Western union and Bell Telephone.  The Lineman's splice.  This method is even in the NASA astronaut manuals in most spacecraft and has been thoroughly tested with results usually ending up stronger than the rest of the wire being repaired.


You can make a lineman's splice by doing the following.  First strip off about an inch or so of insulation leaving the bare wire.  Second place the two bare wire ends across each other in an X shape.  Third wrap them around the other wire end twisting to make sure they're secure and tight.  at the end you end up with something like this.[/font] [/b]


You can take this a step further and apply solder for an even stronger connection.  Just place your soldering iron (already heated up of course), underneath your splice, and feed solder into the top.  the wires will naturally wick away the molten solder and fuse together.

Finally either wrap it in electrical tape or if you can slide heat shrink tubing over it and apply heat, I usually use a lighter for this and keep a small stick lighter in my utility bandolier for this exact purpose.  You can heat up both Electrical tape and heat shrink and it has the same effect of creating a bonded sheath that won't easily come undone causing shorts.

You can also do the above and add an additional splice onto it by wrapping a third wire somewhere else along your exposed section of wire.  If you plan to do this strip back more than an inch or so and leave room for it.  This is known as a taproot splice and is very effective at splitting off lines from a main wire.  Keep in mind though it's usually better to stagger these to keep your wire splices from being overly thick and prone to failure, soldering and inline barrel crimps help but it's still something to consider.

Furthermore there's also an alternative to soldering. To protect your splice you can get what are called barrel crimp connectors.


To use these you simply slide one along your wire splice, place your wire crimper over it, and squeeze.  anchoring it around the wires and securing your wire splice.  Then slide the heat shrink over it and heat it up.  This comes in handy if you are in the field for example and don't have access to a soldering iron which typically need a workbench to setup.  Feel free to give a firm but gentle tug once you've spliced your wires.  You'll find the lineman's splice is pretty strong, more so once you've either soldered or crimped it in place.

For your reference here are the main methods of splicing covered in this section.  The wires in the image are solid core but you can apply the same techniques to stranded wire as well.