tig cable cover fabric

I had the option of fabric and leather. I chose leather. It had to be in two sections - easily handled - because I had a 50' torch cable.

Tig is much the same - but perhaps the last 10' might be lighter. Leather is heavy for the light action of tig.

The reason I chose leather - hot balls of metal can melt or burn fabric. Fabric comes in 50' lengths.

Martin

I used really thin leather. I got about a 8'long by 1' wide piece off of the scrap table at the Tandy Leather place and the snaps and a tool to install the snaps for about 1/4 the cost of the commercial hose cover.

I split the piece lengthwise into 4" wide strips. I joined the strips by overlapping for an inch or so and putting a snap in the overlap area. I think I put snaps in about every 8" or 10" for the length of the now 24' snake. It worked well and 15 years later is still working well. As I remember, it took about an afternoon to make.

The leather is thin enough that I don't notice it while moving the torch at all.

Good Luck, Bob

I used ballistic cloth (heavy but flexible Nylon for bullet proof vests) then covered the last six feet of that, at the torch end, with light weight Kevlar cloth, Kevlar being on the short list of synthetic fibres that won't melt.

And for all that when the TIG rig spent a year in storage the rat bastard rats chewed through the kevlar, nibbled a bit on the Nylon but (thankfully) left the hoses alone.

Dennis van Dam

There were some for sale on Ebay ranging from $30 to $60. They say they have high temp resistance. Don't know how heavy they might be though.

Was just at the welding supply joint, they had leather ones with zippers made for TIG cabling. As far as price goes, it's one of those places that just has the stuff out, the price you ultimately get charged depends on what class of customer you are in their computer. If you had a source of thin leather and long zippers and a good sewing machine, you could probably beat their price.

Stan

If you sew up your own I would loose the zipper. Besides saving the expense of the zipper, in this abusive environment they're prone to damage and if they get next to hot metal they like to melt (they're typically Nylon). Once the integrity of the zipper is lost even on just a few adjacent teeth the whole dam zipper needs to be replaced. As well zipper takes away a bit of flexibility from the leads and it really only serves to ease installation and removal which should happen only one time each over the life of the cover. Finally, sewing up a cover without a zipper is a lot easier than one with a zipper, even for someone with experience.

To ensure ease of installation of a zipperless cover sew it up to fit loose over the leads.

Dennis van Dam

Mine was 25' long so I got two for the 50' torch cable. It was Velcro all the way - lay the leather out - Velcro up. Then lay the torch cable in the 'center' - then roll over an edge and press. Easy to add or subtract a cable. Just rip the Velcro open...

Martin