Cut Conduit With Wires Inside
A copper tubing cutter cuts cleanly through PVC conduit without damaging the cables.
I usually cut PVC electrical conduit with a saw, but on one particular job, the conduit I was working on had wires running through it, and cutting with a saw was too risky. I considered using the plumber’s trick of “sawing” through the PVC with a braided mason’s twine, but there wasn’t room to pull the twine from various angles. Instead, I tried a copper tubing cutter. After only a few rotations, it cut cleanly through without any damage to the wires. The inside edge of the pipe had a bit of a ridge, but that was quickly removed with a scrape of a flat-blade screwdriver.
—Addison Oliveira, East Greenwich, R.I.
Illustration by Charles Miller.
From Fine Homebuilding #322
