Copper Wire

[bucketmouth]

My dad is gone now, but over the years he saved wire. I have coils & coils of wire. Enough to fill a 50 gallon drum barrell.

I talked to a salvage yard guy who said if I were to strip off the plastic coating and expose the copper wire, it would be worth a fair amount of money.

Well, besides using a razor blade knife and cutting the passtic coating length wise on each piece of wire, I have no idea how the plastic could be stripped. Any ideas? Stripping the coating the way I have described would reaquire all my free time for the next year!

[ 03-08-2004, 10:11 AM: Message edited by: bucketmouth ]

[reeldick]

Would melting it off in a fire be an option? You could retreive the wire after it cooled.

[Woody]

We used to burn it. :shocked: Probably no way you could get away with that now.

[ICHTHYDEMON]

We turned in a bunch last year,and ended up cutting all the coating off. We ended up with almost $700 in copper. The recycler warned us that he wouldn't accept it if we burned the coating off.

[StickFish]

Originally posted by ICHTHYDEMON:
We turned in a bunch last year,and ended up cutting all the coating off. We ended up with almost $700 in copper. The recycler warned us that he wouldn't accept it if we burned the coating off.

<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Sounds like a device challenge, use some pieces of angle iron and a pizza cutter to make a channel the wire has to pass through, enough pressure from the pizza cutter would cut through the insulation, setup two take up reels, one for the bar copper the other for the stipped off insulation. I'd think once you the wire going one way and the insulation the other a simple crank is al you would need to strip the wire.

Heck I bet there are some other Ifishers who could gin up something better than I can think of.

[Dan in Alaska]

An electrician friend of mine showed me his secret trick for stripping Romex wires. He uses a potatoe peeler. Works like a charm!

[Conspiracy Theory]

Depending on the type of wire and insulation all you need to do is remove a small amount of the insulation on one side then pull the insulation off the rest. Just grab the insulation and pull it to the side and down the wire. With enough pulling it will split the insulation and off the wire it comes. This works with solid or stranded wire. Again it depends on the wire and insulation sizes. You might give it a try though. Sometimes you can remove many feet in one pull. Some insulation will come off the entire length of wire this way. Others will break after a few feet.

[1pump]

If you use a stripper, you might be able to strip off close to a foot at a time. It just depends on wether the wire is solid or braid, and what kind of insulation. I have an automatic stripper which works OK on braid, but not real hot on solid.
Romex can be a pain because you gotta strip the outer jacket off and then strip the inner wire. And UF type cable can be a real nightmare. :depressed: