PSA: Those cheap coax compression tools will wreck your fittings

I used a $10 compression tool from Amazon for about 6 months and thought it was fine. Then I had a job last Tuesday where three fittings failed during the signal test in one house. The customer was standing right there watching me, and I felt like a fool. I borrowed my coworker's Klein tool and the difference was night and day. The cheap tool wasn't crimping the fitting evenly, so water was getting in slowly over time. I finally broke down and spent $80 on the Klein at the supply house. Has anyone else had a cheap tool cost them a service call they could have avoided?

2 comments

2 Comments

amybarnes21d ago

Did you check if the cheap tool was out of spec from day one?

noah_webb21d ago

Got a buddy who bought a set of cheap chisels from a hardware store, thought he was saving fifty bucks. He spent a whole weekend flattening the backs, trying to get them square. When he finally measured them with a decent square, turns out the edges were ground at a slight angle out of the box. He never did get them to cut straight, ended up tossing them in the back of his drawer and buying a mid-range set from a real tool supplier a month later.