Making a coaxial cable means cutting bulk cable to length and attaching connectors to each end so it’s ready to carry signal. The process takes about five minutes per end once you have the right tools, and the quality of your termination directly affects picture clarity, internet speed, and signal strength. Here’s everything you need to do it right.
What’s Inside a Coaxial Cable
Understanding the four layers you’ll be working with helps you strip and terminate cleanly. From the center outward, coaxial cable contains:
- Center conductor: A solid or stranded copper wire that carries the signal.
- Dielectric insulator: A white plastic core that separates the center conductor from the shield and maintains consistent spacing, which is critical for signal quality.
- Metallic shield: A layer of braided wire and foil that blocks outside interference from reaching the center conductor.
- Outer jacket: The black or white plastic skin that protects everything inside from moisture and physical damage.
When you terminate the cable, you’re carefully exposing each of these layers at precise lengths so the connector seats correctly and the center conductor makes clean contact without touching the shield.
Tools You’ll Need
A basic coax termination kit includes three tools: a coaxial cable stripper, a compression or crimp tool, and a cable cutter. Many kits bundle all three with a set of connectors for under $30. The stripper is the most important, as it’s calibrated to cut through the outer jacket and dielectric at the correct depths without nicking the center conductor or shield underneath.
You’ll also want a handful of extra connectors for practice. Expect to botch your first one or two attempts while you get a feel for the stripping depth. A multimeter is useful for testing your finished cable but isn’t strictly required if you can just plug it in and check for signal.
Choosing Between Compression and Crimp Connectors
Both connector styles work, but compression fittings are the better choice for most home installations. They offer superior pull strength compared to crimp or solder connections, produce lower signal leakage, and are designed for simple field installation with little experience needed. A compression connector is a single piece with no small components to lose or misalign.
Crimp connectors are faster to install (about 15 seconds for an experienced technician) and don’t require a specialized compression tool, but they generally produce worse signal performance. A poor crimp won’t seat the contact properly, pulling the interface out of specification and degrading both signal continuity and quality. Crimped contacts also can’t be removed and reused. If you mess up, you scrap the connector and start over.
For home TV, internet, and satellite work, compression F-type connectors on RG6 cable are the standard.
Step-by-Step Assembly
1. Cut the Cable to Length
Use a cable cutter or sharp utility knife to make a clean, square cut. A ragged or angled cut makes stripping harder and can result in an uneven center conductor that doesn’t seat in the connector.
2. Strip the Outer Jacket
Insert the cable end into your coaxial stripper and rotate it around the cable 3 to 5 times. For an F-type compression connector on RG6, you need to expose about 1/2 inch (0.50 to 0.55 inches) of the outer shield and braid. The stripper makes two cuts simultaneously: one through the outer jacket only, and a second closer to the tip that cuts through both the jacket and the dielectric.
3. Remove the Jacket and Fold Back the Braid
Pull off the outer jacket section to expose the braided shield and foil underneath. Fold the braid back over the remaining jacket so it lies flat against the outside of the cable. This gives the connector’s compression ring something to grip and ensures the shield makes solid contact for proper grounding.
4. Trim the Dielectric
Remove the white dielectric insulator to expose the center conductor. For F-type connectors, you want about 1/4 inch (0.25 to 0.30 inches) of bare center conductor extending past the dielectric, and about the same length of exposed dielectric past the folded-back braid. These dimensions matter because too much exposed conductor causes the pin to protrude too far into the port, and too little means a weak connection.
5. Inspect the Prep
Before attaching the connector, check that no stray braid wires are touching the center conductor. Even a single strand bridging the gap between the shield and the center conductor creates a short that kills your signal entirely. Also make sure the center conductor is straight, not bent to one side.
6. Seat the Connector
Slide the compression connector onto the cable end. Push it on until the dielectric is visible through the connector’s window or sits flush with the internal shoulder, depending on the connector design. The center conductor should protrude slightly past the connector tip.
7. Compress
Place the cable and connector into your compression tool and squeeze the handle fully. You’ll feel a definitive click or stop when the compression ring is fully seated. This permanently locks the connector to the cable. Give it a firm tug to confirm it’s secure.
Testing Your Cable
Set a multimeter to resistance (ohms) or continuity mode. Touch one probe to the center conductor and the other to the outer shield at the same end of the cable. You should see a high resistance reading and hear no beep, which confirms there’s no short between the two. A low resistance reading or a beep means a stray braid wire is contacting the center conductor somewhere, and you’ll need to recut and reterminate that end.
To check for a break in the center conductor, move one probe to the center pin at the opposite end of the cable. Now you want a low resistance reading, confirming continuity from end to end. Repeat the same test between the shields at both ends.
Handling and Bend Radius
Coaxial cable is more fragile than it looks. Kinking or overbending it crushes the dielectric, changes the spacing between the center conductor and shield, and permanently increases signal loss at that point. The safe rule is to never bend the cable tighter than 10 times its outer diameter. For standard RG6 (about 0.27 inches in diameter), that means keeping bends no tighter than roughly a 2.7-inch radius, or about the size of a tennis ball.
If you’re routing cable through tight spaces where it will be bent and straightened repeatedly, use a more conservative limit of 20 times the outer diameter. And avoid bending cable in cold weather. Temperatures below 59°F (15°C) make the dielectric stiffer and more prone to cracking.
Grounding at the Entry Point
Any coaxial cable entering a building needs its outer shield grounded. This protects your equipment from voltage surges caused by lightning or power line contact. The grounding block should be installed as close as possible to where the cable enters the structure, with a ground wire running to your home’s grounding electrode. For mobile homes, grounding at the service equipment within 30 feet of the exterior wall is acceptable. When the shield is properly grounded, no additional surge protection is required on the cable itself.
RG6 vs. RG59: Which Cable to Use
RG6 is the standard for nearly all modern residential installations. At 1,000 MHz, RG6 loses about 6.5 dB of signal per 100 feet, while the thinner RG59 loses about 8.1 dB over the same distance. That difference adds up fast on longer runs. RG6 also has better shielding and handles the higher frequencies used by satellite TV and broadband internet. RG59 is mainly found in older installations and short-run analog video applications like CCTV cameras. If you’re buying cable for a new project, go with RG6.