How to Crimp Cat-5
Tools and Materials:
Step 1.
Measure your Cat-5 Cable carefully. Give yourself a couple of extra feet. It would suck if you went through all the work and made a perfect Cat-5 cable and then found it wasn't long enough. Too long is better than too short, however, remember that the maximum operable length of Cat-5 cable is 300 feet.
Step 2.
Strip about 3/4 inch of outer plastic shielding from the end of the cable-to-be. This extra amount is for adjustments in length later on. Be careful that you do not cut or nick any of the smaller wires inside. Even if you only nick the shielding but do not cut the wire itself, you have already degraded your cable to the point where it may be unusable. Do it over as many times as necessary. That's what your couple of extra feet are for. I recommend using single sharp razor, or one blade of a pair of scissors to score the outside of the shielding and then pull it off with your hands. This minimizes the danger of damaging the wires inside.
Step 3.
Once you have the outer shielding off, decide on your wiring scheme and line the wires up appropriately, making sure to smooth out the twists in the wires so they lay flat. This may take some practice.
There are various different wiring diagrams for non-crossover ethernet cabling. They really don't matter at all in the least, as long as the heads are absolutely identical on both ends. The electrons don't care what color the wire they are traveling over is.
Due to convention however, there are some different methodologies. These are viewed from left to right when you are looking at the bottom of the RJ-45 head. (The metal pins are on the bottom and the plastic clip thing is on the top)
568A goes W-Green, Green, W-Orange, Blue, W-Blue, Orange, W-Brown, Brown.
568B goes W-Orange, Orange, W-Green, Blue, W-Blue, Green, W-Brown, Brown
I usually arrange it as Orange, W-Orange, Blue, W-Blue, Green, W-Green, Brown, W-Brown. But as I said earlier, it's just a matter of convention and there is no technical reason to do it in these prescribed orders.
Step 4.
Once you have the wires laying flat, it's time to cut them all to the same length. This is alot harder than it seems. It may take 3 or 4 cuts to get them to a satisfactory sameness because the twists in the wire shift as you move and as you try to fit the wires in the head, and if your wires are not all pushed up to the end of the head, and snagged firmly in the pin-prongs when you crimp, your cable will not work. Take your time. This isn't a race.
Step 5.
Final step. Time to crimp. Before you crimp, make sure the wires are all in the correct order (this is more important for the second head than the first, as you can simply emulate your mistake in the second head if you make one in the first) and pushed all the way up to the end of the head. If you crimp before you are ready, you will need to cut the ruined head off and start all over again. Once an RJ-45 Head has been crimped it cannot be reused.
Once that's all settled, shove the head in the crimper, being careful not to dislodge anything, and squeeze hard. If you don't squeeze hard, the prongs won't penetrate the wire and your cable won't work. Whale on that thing.
Repeat these steps for the other end of the cable.
Don't forget to test your cable with the cable tester before you run out to do anything important.