I have listed the Box Opener as my favourite tool for a long time now but it's only becoming more useful to me all the time..
Aside from the obvious uses that are advertised what have you used the Box Opener for? Have you found yourself using it more than you thought you would?
I mentioned this briefly a few days ago but I find this tool is perfectly suited for electrical work. Specifically cutting wire insulation. Here in North America our electrical grid is a lower voltage and higher amperage than in Europe and other parts of the world. What this basically means is our household wiring has to be much heavier gauge (thicker wire) here. Often there is a thick outer insulation on the 3 conductor wiring. I'll show and example.
This isn't the standard common wiring you'd find inside of a wall. This is a more expensive multi strand 3 conductor wire that is rated for exposed or buried applications. I also make extension cords out of this stuff. It's flexable and has a thick extra outer insulation. As you can see the conductors here are quite large, 10 AWG specifically.
I had this wire buried underground for several years. Every time it rained recently the ground fault circuit would trip. I did a bunch of test and determined I had to dig up its entire length and inspect it. I found that Pocket Gophers had come into contact with the cable in a couple of locations and chewed through the outer insulation and right into the conductor in one spot. I didn't find any bodies so I'm surprised they survived what would have been continued contact with the wire while chewing. This is high voltage after all.
Replacing the wire would have been the best thing to do but I didn't feel it was worth the expense for the couple of lights it was powering. I cut the two bad areas out of the cable and spliced the conductors properly. Actually my idea of properly. Spliced, soldered, heat shrink x2. I then put the wire inside of conduit for it's entire length and re buried.
I really think the Box Opener needs to be marketed as an electricians tool. Out of the tens of thousands of dollars in tools that I have this is simple the best tool I have seen for stripping the outer jacket and insulation on wire of this size. This isn't going to cut metal armoured cable obviously but for the inner conductor insulation there is nothing better. I even stripped the inner conductor with this time as a test. It's serration makes this easy by simply pressing the blade into the wire multiple times all the way around and pulling the jacket off with your fingers.
The pictures show the steps I needed to do to this cable. The Box Opener made it so easy to do. Typically you need to hold an electricians blade in a opposite manner than most people would think to perform this type of task. I'll also show my "go to" electricians knife and how I hold it for cutting outer insulation.
I would really love to see one of the new locking blade alox knifes with the electrician blade added and the box opener then market it to the working tradespeople. Keep it only a couple of layers thick and keep the clip. A highly visible colour would be a definite plus too.
