Paracords
Replace a cable’s rubber insulation with nylon paracord for a custom look and feel.
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Paracords, short for paracorded cables, are cables with braided nylon paracord sleeving instead of rubber sleeving. Creating paracords is sometimes referred to as paracording.
Parts
- An OEM cable
- A matching length of 550 paracord
Some popular places to get inexpensive paracord are Paracord Planet, Paracord Galaxy, and local hardware or craft stores.
It is highly recommended to use 550 paracord, and to avoid paracord with metallic tracers as these are known to have fit issues when sleeving.
Process
There are many methods for making paracord cables, but generally the process is roughly:
- Desolder the cable from the controller.
- Remove the rubber insulation from the cable using a craft knife or similar.
- Optionally, remove the copper shielding from the cable.
- Either remove the pins from the connector and tape them tightly to the cable, or cut off the controller-side end entirely.
- Cut a length of paracord slightly longer than the cable.
- Sleeve the paracord over the entire cable. Various methods for this exist:
- Feeding the paracord over the cable end by hand by pushing and pulling about a centimeter at a time
- Heat-shrinking a small object like a screwdriver shaft to the cable end and feeding the paracord over that
- Heat-shrinking or taping the cable to the inner nylon strands of the paracord and using them to pull the cable through
- If the controller-side end was cut off, re-crimp new pins.
- Reattach the pins to the connector.
- Solder the connector to the controller.