When I've built my boats, I like to leave enough gap between the flex cable collet and the stuffing tube to be able to change the starting belt if need be plus figure out the distance needed to loosen the collet to remove the cable so we're looking at a good 1/2" or slightly more. Too much gap can result in cable whip, not a good thing. I've seen cable whip flare the end of a stuffing tube that looked like Elmer Fudd's backfiring shotgun!
