Don't Point That At Me!

What the heck is that thing?  And do not point it at me!

You may actually know what it is, and if not, I'm going to tell you.  It's a stripped end of a coax cable that will get connected to one of the cable TV outlets.  It's pretty easy to do.  You really need a coax stripper - I suppose you could try it with a knife, but a stripper is a lot safer.

What you see here is the shield - what looks like little tiny wires - pulled back over the cable itself.  You strip the copper wire back a bit as you can see...

Then you slip a connector over the cable.  The shield, which is the ground side of the signal, is touching the outside of the connector.  And the center wire, which is the signal, is in the middle.

This connector, for the record, is an RG-59.  Pretty much your standard cable TV connector.  The cable is RG-6.

Then you take a crimper and crimp the whole thing.  You can use pliers I suppose but they don't work well.  The strippers and crimpers are relatively cheap (less than 20 smackeroos total) so it's worth getting the proper tools.

And this is what your final connector looks like.

My crimps and stuff aren't quite as good as The Cable Dude Who Does This For a Living, but the connector is solid and won't come apart.

Which is a good thing, since it will be inside the wall unseen by humans.

I should add that the newest (to me anyway...) type of connector is a "compression" connector.  They have a longer sleeve over the cable, and look really slick.  The person who did our FIOS hookup used 'em and they look like a million bucks.  Really nice.  I would have sprung for some, but these connections aren't going to be visible anyway, and the compression connectors cost a bit more and they need a special tool that's fairly pricey.  So I went old school on this job.

Here's the area where the router is mounted on the wall, and next to it is the jack plate which has connections for internet, cable, and phone. The end of the cable I documented here runs up behind the molding and connects to the other side of the gold connector you see here.

Also a note - I fiddled with the cover after this shot was taken and the gap at the top went away.

I need to run all the mess o' cables inside a piece of Wiremold and also hide the cables where they enter the room under the stair.  This will make more sense shortly.