How to braid with four strands of wire

I am now onto my third stepper motor in two years. The motor is part of my self-designed right ascension drive system with periodic error correction.

When I designed the system I chose a specific stepper motor from an overseas manufacturer. I knew that one day the motor might need to be replaced so I purchased a half dozen. That first motor lasted more than a year but the second one for only a couple months. Such is the state of quality control. I am now onto my third one.

There are four wires coming out of the motor that can easily form a rat’s nest. You need to tame it or else sayounara. For the first motor I used “heat shrink tubing” seen here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-shrink_tubing

but I needed to chain quite a lot of them together to meet the requisite length of 20 inches. Furthermore I needed a “heat gun” in order to shrink the tubing. (If you are adventurous you can use a butane lighter.)

For the second motor I did not have enough tubing so I looked online for other solutions. I came across this 3-minute YouTube video on how to braid four strands (of anything):

It works for me although I should mention that you should ask your significant other to help straighten the wire before attempting to braid it. The stepper motor manufacturer did a poor job of preparing the wire for shipment. It looks like someone twirled it around their fingers a few times and then stuffed it in the box.

I’ve attached a photo of the braided wire after I got done. (Remember “Turn” and “Cross”, “Turn” and “Cross”…)