Cable Lacing Cheat Sheet

Cable lacing is a technique for managing cables by lacing them together or to harnesses using a series of running lockstitches. This is done using waxed cord or flat lacing tape, often made of nylon or polyester. Where most people reach for plastic or Velcro zip ties to do this job, I’ve found that spending some time to use string is quite enjoyable. I’m not trained in the high standards of cable lacing used by NASA, the Navy, or other experts. But, for just managing cables around the house, these references work well.

Laced wiring harness

Cable lacing example from Wikipedia.

Sure, there are many, many, many, many, many other places you can read about cable lacing, but this is my own mirror of the key ideas.

Starting

Lacing typically starts with a length of cord 2.5 times the length of what you want to lace together. You may need a little extra if you’re lacing together a lot of cords.

Lacing starts with a starting tie. There are a couple of good options here.

Starting tie

Option 1: a secure starting tie

Or, lacing can also be started with a clove hitch and square knot, followed by two lock stitches.

Starting tie

Option 2: clove hitch + square knot. Follow this with two lock stiches.

Running

For the length of the cables, you can use lock stitches (in this case, the marline hitch).

Marline hitch

Be sure you use the correct technique.

Note the correct technique is required for the hitch to hold.

Branching

Terminating tie

If you branch, use a lock stitch (and optionally some extra turns) and continue on one branch while starting a new cord on the other.

Terminating

Terminating tie

Terminating tie. Pull through and trim cord end.

Or, like starting, you can also terminate with some lock stitches and a clove hitch with a square knot on top.

A note on individual lacing

Rather than a single continuous cord, you can also use a series of individual bound wraps at equidistant points along the cable. For this, use a clove hitch with a square knot on top.

Individual knots

Clove hitch with a square knot.

Posts from blogs I follow

Benchmarking Bowtie2 Threading

I've been using Bowtie2 to align reads to genomes, and one of it's many settings is the number of threads. While sometimes people advise using about as many threads as your machine has cores, but if I'm running on a big machine are there diminishing retur…

via Jeff Kaufman's Writing December 01, 2023

Control - how to make a game enjoyable for casual audiences

I’ve decided to intentionally take more time to play video games this year, since it’s a relatively healthy way to escape from the real world once in a while. A friend recommended one game in particular: Control: Ultimate Edition. During the Steam summer s…

via ./techtipsy December 01, 2023

clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

I have a bunch of Raspberry Pi systems all over the place, goofy things that they are. They do dumb and annoying jobs in strange locations. I even have one of the older models, which is called just the B+. You can think of it as the "1B+" but apparen…

via Writing - rachelbythebay December 01, 2023

Generated by openring-rs