I’ve been having some landscaping work done in my yard, and despite having all of the utility lines marked, the crews have managed to cut my cable internet line on several occasions. Since I work from home, and we don’t have hardly any cellular reception at the house, it was pretty devastating. I couldn’t even call the cable company to repair it without driving somewhere with better reception.
So when they said it would be a few days to get a technician to come and repair the cut cable, I decided to try out some repairs on my own. I happen to have some coax crimpers, spare cable, and ends at home, so I first attempted to terminate the cut ends, but the direct-burial cable that is used outdoors is quite a bit thicker than indoor cable, so my ends and crimpers wouldn’t work.
Without any of the correct tools, I was left with just the most primitive of methods: simply twist the center wire together with some needle nose plier, and tie them together with wire ties.
Here’s one of my first attempts when they cut the coax. I tied it into my own coax and which ran back to the house. On this first attempt, I tried to leave some extra shielding and twist that together from each end.
A subsequent cut, with newer cable had enough slack that I could just tie the two ends together directly. After it was repaired, this is what the technician left so you can see how I first twisted the ends together as much as I could with some pliers before adding a wire tie onto it. I just cut the shielding clean off and didn’t attempt to mess with it, which still resulted in it working fine.
It didn’t result in the full 200 Mbps+ speed that I should be getting, but 50+ Mbps was absolutely better than nothing for the few days until the technician could come and re-terminate the ends properly:
