Well,
If you strip the sheath from a 25 pair cable, you very quickly end up with 50 tangled leads. I know this, cause that's what I did time and time again.
So what you do is stip an inch or so of sheath off the end. Then you find this cloth string (which I thought was just there to piss me off). Then you wrap some electrical tape around the exposed 1" of leads (leaving the string out of it), and then pull the string back, which cuts the sheathing. You're probably too young to remember, but they used to have a similar thing in a band aid wrapper.
Anyway, now you've got a foot or so of exposed wire, and an empty sheath hanging loose. You carefully and neatly trim the loose sheathing off, and then wrap electrical tape around the leads (about an inch or so up from the sheathing), back down to and around the sheathing which wasn't trimmed off.
So what you end up with is 25 pairs, taped at both ends. This keeps them secure. Then, as you punch down each pair, you gently pull it from the taped end, do the punching, leaving the remaing pairs secured by the tape.
Now when it's all punched down, you have a tight looking punch job, the leads remain twisted as you use them, and it's very easy to find the pair you are looking for. And finally, the end of the sheathing is wrapped neatly, adding to the professional look, as opposed to a bunch of wires just sticking out of the sheath.
Dunno if I described that very well. Next time I do it, which will be soon, I'll try to take pictures of each step.
