That's right, HEAT shrink.  Not "cold river" shrinkage.  That has been discussed to death.

I'm upgrading/reviving/restoring my Thorens TT, and in typical fini style, I am researching it to death.  I'm to the point where even I am sick of my questions.  Thankfully, this one's easy.

What's the best way to  shrink heat shrink, without 1.) burning cables or the house, 2.) exotic heat gun apparatti, and 3.) making it look less than "professional?"  These techniques, which y'all will so graciously describe, will be used in the construction of both the line and power cordage.

Oh, and please keep it clean. 

 fini,

If you get some low temp heat shrink, you can very likely use a hair dryer. I use a heat gun set on low, and that has always worked well. Are you covering connections/splices or longer lengths? Most heat shrink is rather stiff once it shrinks.

Bruce 

I use a hair dryer with a diffuser.

I use a BIC lighter

Well, I got a variety of sizes of 2:1  heat shrink.  A fellow at Radio Shack said he just uses his soldering iron, carefully rubbed all around.  It seemed to work very well.  The tonearm cords I made look pretty good, with Techflex and all.

I use heat gun apparatti (I just wanted to say the word) apparatti, say it with me apparatti!

BIC works too with lovely roadie-type scorch marks.

 The heat gun is the best, but I have used soldering iron tips, matches, lighters and a propane torch in a pinch.

If you put enough current through the wire, it will shrink itself.

apparatti apparatti apparatti

colterphoto1:

I use heat gun apparatti (I just wanted to say the word) apparatti, say it with me apparatti!

Ok... Happy Ratty!!!

 I've had some really bad heat shrink from Radio Shack. I usually get mine from a local electronics supply house here in town (yup, we have one and they are really nice folks). Most of what I get is polyolefin tubing, which works well for what I use it on. I have a bunch of the clear that I got to put on connectors, so I could have labels underneath. I print our my info on a laser printer, use a glue stick to put it on the connector and then put the clear hs over it. Still readable and stays put. It is cheaper than buying a labeler just for wiring and cables.

I got low on shrink tube once. All I had left was some that was too small in diameter. I cut a piece to the length I needed, slid it unto some fine needle nose pliers, and spread the pliers out stretching the tubing to a larger diameter. Stretch, release, stretch some more, release etc ... until you get it to the size diameter needed. Stretch too much too quickly and it will split. I then placed the stretched tubing over the wire and it shrank back to its normal size shorty after. You don't have a lot of time before it shrinks back to its normal size diameter, so you have to work quickly. Then all I had to do was put just a little bit of hair drier heat to it to get it to shrink some for that good tight fit. Do it all the time now. This can be good for places where you don't want a lot of heat placed. Now hand me my needle nose shrink tube stretcher.

I've used lighters and a steam iron (without the steam, of course) and got lumpy results and burned fingers with both methods.  Finally, I spotted a heat gun on sale and got it.  Much better!  A tidy and safe job, plus the gun is handy for other things, like warming a window-frame so draft-stop tape will adhere in cold weather, to name just one.

Embrace it fini.  Just think - a perfectly good excuse to buy another tool.

Of course today you could have just left it out in the sun.

James

PE has HST on sale in their current flyer. Just buy a bunch so you have every size in every color available. Ok- at least black and red. I use red for  my speaker cables to indicate the RIGHT one (or the positive lead) . Also get dual bananas in same color code.  

colterphoto1:

PE has HST on sale in their current flyer. Just buy a bunch so you have every size in every color available. Ok- at least black and red. I use red for  my speaker cables to indicate the RIGHT one (or the positive lead) . Also get dual bananas in same color code.  

Michael, I can't find the sale, searching PE's latest online flyer.  Can you provide more info?