Yeah, that's what I ended up doing. Even though there's a very good chance that they would have been fine, I'm just not the type to leave things up to chance very much. So I went back up to the attic, removed the nuts, snipped off the damaged portions of the wire, re-twisted, snipped off the short length of damage that I had just caused by re-twisting, and then re-attached the nuts. In some cases, this meant I had to remove the plastic staples that were anchoring the cables just outside the j-boxes, in order to feed more wire into the boxes, but that's ok. I got more practice and my technique is better, and that never hurts. Plus, the main thing is I feel better about the whole thing.
Yes, I don't mean to imply you shouldn't fix it, quite the contrary. I found some install I did a while back to my chop saw that was never right, probably did it in the dark and then wondered why I was getting funny readings etc,,, anyway,,, human error is a huge factor even with experienced men.
My point was that there was no need to wake up in a cold sweat. This is a big argument for single device circuits, in my mind its hard to beat an unspliced wire and all the more important in heavy loaded applications with dedicated equipment.
But twist I say no,, in a 3 way the conductors lay along each other and get wedged together with nothing to try to force them apart, the spring doesn't have to override a pre bend.
I try to make strips consistent length, its just easier to see that its going together right when the nut is applied.
I think a factor as to why the old times answer "not very much" may be in the nature of the loading. We got 10 x the stuff, most of the real loads are now shared over so many more circuits when everyone daisy chained from a 4 space fuse with a 30 in it to cover overload and some motor starts. A general use circuit can have wall worts and minor other loads, even a fridge runs 4A or so, it will run with a small air cond on a 20 which would approach being loaded and the fridge is not likely 100% but assuming no significant other load these usually serve a single appliance at a time. Running a vacuum comes to mind, in a shop a saw etc. They fully load a 15A circuit, often have a 14 cord like an air comp with a 15 end so they load this general 20 circuit about 80% or so.
When you are not actively running the saw or low loads like small battery charger or wall warts the wire isn't doing anything and when it is the real load is 15 not 20. A long run to an outdoor outlet for these type garages in this discussion is 50 ft even 75 or 100 and Bull wont save 50 cents power or wear and tear in a year if he upgraded wire to every outlet he owned for free.
Minimum code is 14 in many cases, no one including me thinks its good for much other than lights, at short distance wouldn't hurt the operation any or overheat the wire but the things are notorious for trips, And it also doesn't insult voltage drop to the host circuit as was pointed out in other threads.
