Galvanized is zinc which is toxic.

To make clean swages takes practice, and lots of time. I have mastered the swaging of ferrules and thimble eyes on cable ends because I have done it 1,000's of times. The measurements must be precise, which is extremely difficult for long pieces of non-rigid material. The ferrule has to be crimped in a certain order to tighten up to the thimble and then to elongate and cover up the sharp, frayed end of the wire rope. You must use 7x19 wire rope for bendability. You will find it nearly impossible to swage ferrules with thimbles in the field. The eyebolt must be connected first, then feed the cable through the posts, pull it as tight as possible, secure it in the tight position and swage the stop ferrule to the end. then figure out how to make it a clean edge.

I pay the $1,500 for the prefabbed stainless cables with the clean tensioners, wire rope grabs and end caps. I have already mastered cable making so it is an easy decision. It takes me a few hours to run the cables on a standard deck. The post drilling and installation is the bulk of the labor. My buddy likes the look of my deck railing but had never even unspooled a roll of wire rope. He tried your idea. 4 years later he still has the rolls of cable in the garage and keeps asking me to borrow the tool to make the clean ends he sees on other cable assemblies I put together (on gates and such.) He doesn't understand the clean end is the result of 1,000's of times practicing. He thinks I have an automatic press that does it for you!

So forget the zinc wire rope and making your own cable assemblies. You can already save $4,500 by buying the prefabbed ones and DIY.

For an alternate rail that is somewhat similar to cable rails, but way less $ you could use bull wire panels. That is if your deck is out in the country where no permits/inspections are required. It's not allowed in the city I work in because of the climbing hazard. I call this bs, a kid that would climb a bullwire rail could climb a cable rail too. Plus if a kid is stupid enough to climb over the rail then he shouldn't be left out there unsupervised.

To see what it looks like try this link.
http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc79/deckman22/

Al

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately the inspector will be looking at it so everything will be to code. Being cheap and stubborn I`m going to give it a try. I`ll either posts pics if it turns out worthwhile or publicly admit defeat.

I've also done a fair amount of cable rail projects, though I doubt that I've done as many as Aiden.

The unfortunate thing is that anything stainless steel costs more. In many cases it is worth it.

Philodog, how did the install go?