How to Crimp a Network Cable With a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife

The need is the mother of the creativity. As a Support Technician, many situations make me try some unusual ways to solve troubles. This one is a good sample, when I need to crimp a CAT5 network cable in a Bank here in Brazil, but I haven't my crimper tool with me. My Victorinox Tinker is always on my pocket, so I try to do the task only with it and works very well! MacGyver will be proud about me! ;)

So, it is one more Instructable for all of you, my friends of this website, and as in all my Instructbles, I'm sorry about English Language mistakes, ok?

Please give me your comments!

With Best Regards!

Cesar

To do this job, you only need:

- 01 Swiss Army Knife with a blade, can opener and bottle opener. The most basic Victorinox models have those implements (Tinker, Camper, Spartan, etc.)
- RJ45 connectors
- Network (like Furukawa) cable.

Take 2 or 3 centimeters of the cable and with the blade, cut it out, taking care to do not cut the internal coloured strings.

Now you must to make the color sequence for your cable. For standard, we in Brazil use the two sides as:

White Green / Green
White Orange / Blue
White Blue/ Orange
White Brown / Brown

If you need a cross cable, one side must folow the sequence above and the other side must be:

White Orenge / Orange
White Green / Blue
White Blue / Green
White Brown / Brown

This is the standard used here. I don't know the standard used in other places, so please be sure to the standard used in your place, ok?

Now you must to cut the strings, in order to make your crimping easy.

On a hard surface, press the blade over the strings and cut, leaving 1 to 1,5 centimeters to crimp.

Now you need to place the cable on the connector. Just look to the metal connectors and place the cable inside, using the same sequence of colors.

White green on the first connector
Green on the second
White orange on the third
Blue on the fourth
White blue on the fifth
Orange on the sixth
White brown on the seventh
Brown on the eighth

Or using your local standard.

Be sure that each string goes until the end of the connector. Only one string that not reach the end can be a trouble for your work.

Now is the hard work. Use the can opener top (on Victorinox models it have a small screwdriver on it) and push strongly each connector in, in order to make it bypass each string. Do it with each of the eight connectors. After place each connector down, look each one to see if all are in the same line.

Be sure to do not brake the plastic around the connectors.

Now take the bottle opener and place it on the down part of the connector where is the piece that will fix the cable. Push strongly the piece down with the bottle opener.

You have now a crimped network cable with your Swiss Army Knife. Pull softly the connector and the cable to ensure that it is well crimped and fixed.

Now, just plug and use it!

Thank you for read more this Instructable and I hope it can help you in your IT emergency needs!

Again, please place your comments about this instructable!

Best Regards!

Cesar Scavone