Saw a panel swap go from disaster to clean in 45 minutes

I was helping a journeyman swap a 40-year-old Zinsco panel in a basement in St. Louis, and the first 20 minutes were pure chaos with brittle wires snapping. He pulled out a cordless bandsaw and cut the whole mess out in one smooth pass, then landed every conductor neat. Has anyone else found that tool saves you from a rat's nest on old panels?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_holly28d agoMost Upvoted

Does your journeyman usually clean up the old wires as they go, or is he just cutting and leaving the mess for later? I had a guy once who used a bandsaw on a old Pushmatic panel and it was great, but he never bothered to untangle the dead wires from the new ones. It turned into a bigger headache when I had to trace everything later to label it. The bandsaw is a lifesaver for the initial cut, but without a plan for the debris it just trades one mess for another.

martin.felix28d ago

Five years doing floors taught me one thing: cutting the old stuff out is only half the job, you have to have a system for what's left behind. @the_holly, I think that untangling as you go is the only way to keep from chasing your tail later, even if it slows you down at first. A bandsaw is great for the big cuts, but without a plan for the wire cleanup you're just making more work for yourself down the line.

oliver_morgan14d agoMost Upvoted

Always good advice from @the_holly there. I saw a post from a guy on another forum who used a shop vac with a special tip to suck up the cut wire bits as he went. Said it saved him hours of sweeping and fishing little pieces out of drywall later. That bandsaw trick is nice for speed, but the real win is having a plan for all those messy leftover chunks. Otherwise you're right, you just push the problem down the road.