Josh's recent thread had me thinking that people might be interested in our used cable and housing storage systems.
(also, Josh: our used cables are priced the same as all our other used parts, a mandatory pay-what-you-want donation)
At Recycle Ithaca's Bicycles we inspect and condition used cables and housings before storing them. It's fairly easy and simple.
Cables having lost strands, or housings with cracked shielding are put into scrap.
If cables are intact but a little rusty, we steel wool them. We also un-kink them and cut off frayed ends. This means they are ready for the next person to use, but perhaps more importantly more likely to be used
- we try to avoid the syndrome where we have parts piling up because no
one selects them because they seem like junk.
We store the used cables as whips. They hang vertically. This means people get to find ones of proper length much more easily, and longer cables aren't incessantly getting wasted through people cutting them shorter when they can just as easily find one already the proper length. Each whip can store dozens of cables.
Housings are a little trickier because they have no heads to prevent them pulling through the zip ties, so we add friction using an inner tube. Cables and housings get fed in through the top, which is another reason to clip the frayed bits off the ends, they'd never insert cleanly if the ends were a mess.
These whips are also very portable.
Shorter housings just get stored in a tray in the parts room.
Pictures offer a better explanation. I've added some bonus pictures of our shop :)
-Cyclista
On 2017-09-06 16:47, Ainsley Naylor wrote:
@ Bike Pirates we have always sold cable assemblies (cable, housing, ferrules/caps) as a unit, rather than having to figure our how much housing each participant has used. Our price has been $5 for as long as I can remember and applies to both brake and shift lines.
Ainsley.
On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 12:45 PM, Michael Young michael@westtownbikes.org wrote:
<SNIP>
Used cables are fine to re-use as long as they are in good condition. Cables from the rear can often move to the front and live a longer life.
<SNIP>
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