Mr_Bill wrote:

So far, I've just been staying away from electrical crimping,
as I don't want to burn the house down, but it would be very useful
to be able to do some safe crimp connections.

If you're gonna make crimp connections, like gfretw said, use a decent
crimping tool or forget it.

Try this:
http://www.twacomm.com/catalog/model...tm?ref=Froogle