Stripping insulation

I have a big roll of romex that sat out too long and the insulation is weathered. I want to sell the copper but not sure how to get it out of there, Fire is not an option. The recyclers said to tie it to a tree and the other end to my car and pull it off. That might work but there is over 200 feet of this stuff. I could do it in sections I suppose but that will still leave the strands insulated.

Reply to
daniel peterman
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The scrap yard will have a conversion formula for insulated wire.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

A sharp knife will make short work of it if it is straight. Tie the cable to something, push the blade thru the sheath, walk 200 feet and it's split. You have to hold the knife straight so it does not wander into the wire but it is pretty easy to do. Do the same with each wire, cutting off one side of the insulation. If you hold the angle just right you can cut the side off all 200 feet of one wire in one long strip.

Don Young

Reply to
Don Young

Your looking for one of these:

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I purchased one of these a year ago when copper started heading up. I've pulled over 200 pounds of wire through this without a problem. The thhn stuff is real hard to de-jacket but pulls easy. check your local electrical supply house. Maybe they'll let you borrow theirs.

Jim Vrzal Holiday,Fl.

Reply to
Mawdeeb

Usually, if it's just common Romex, getting the individual wires out of the outer jacket isn't a big deal. There's a dandy little splitting device used by wiremen that make that part easy. Splitting the inner insulation, on the other hand, can be interesting. You'll get the best deal if you sell it stripped, so if you're not worried about spending a little time stripping it, drill a hole in a piece of material that allows the individual insulated wire to pass through the hole without a struggle, then attach a sharp blade to the edge of the hole such that when you pull the wire through the hole, the blade cuts almost all the way through the insulation. Once you get it "scored", it will pull off easily by splitting it and pulling them apart. You'll spend a little time making the setup, but it will probably save you a lot of frustration trying to split the insulation free hand. The same basic setup could be used to split the outer jacket if necessary. Just make the hole the appropriate size.

Harold

Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

They do have a chart. It is exactly half price if the plastic is still on.

Reply to
daniel peterman

That wire zipper is a great idea. My property has romex buried all over the place that should be hauled out plus this roll of the stuff.

Reply to
daniel peterman

snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net (daniel peterman) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@storefull-3231.bay.webtv.net:

Get out your 'ol trusty utility knife. Score the shell, you don't have to cut all the way through. Tie one end to something fixed, split about

8" with the knife all the way through, then start pulling. It will split really easily along the score line. As for the individual wires, lay the knife down at a very flat angle to the wire, and start peeling. If you get the angle right, the knife will just glide along the copper and peel a sliver of insulation off.
Reply to
Anthony

If it is flat Romex I strip about a foot of it and tie it to a large hasp on my garage door and walk backwards away from the garage as the bare ground conductor slits the jacket. After the jacket is off I repeat the process with a large knife. I found a heavy pair of gear driven steel rollers from a large copier. I need to slow down the drive motor and modify it to allow me to just stick the end of a single insulated wire into the rollers to crush the insulation. I have run small pieces through by hand, and it does work, but I want to add a torque motor driven take-up, and different size dies to strip the crushed plastic directly over a 55 gallon drum so it is mostly an automatic operation. I know several large electrical contractors who would be interested in renting it.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

How much we 'talkin about? How much is your time worth? How much does the insulation weigh as a ratio? I do have a romex striper to take off the outer but the inner is a bitch to do in bulk. I've seen commercial strippers using wire wheels.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Careful, here...

Romex comes in two varieties: Type NM and Type UF. NM is the common house wiring. The outer jacket is simply a plastic tube. The ground wire is wrapped in paper and lies between the two power conductors. UF is used for service entrances and for direct burial. The outer jacket of UF is molded around the wires.

Everything everyone has said applies to NM. It is easy to strip, especially if the wire is smooth. If you have sharp kinks in it, they'll slow you down a little, but are still no real problem.

UF, on the other hand, can be a real b**ch. What sometimes works is to cut through the outer jacket from the side of the cable and pull out about a foot of the power conductor. Clamp the cable (containing the ground and the other power connector) firmly, wrap the piece of power connector you just liberated around some kind of handle and pull. With any luck, the cable will rip. With lousy luck, the wire will break.

Anyhow, good luck.

Jerry

Reply to
Jerry Foster

Jerry, When the price of Romex went through the ceiling (as high as $128/roll) I started checking small hardware stores for bargains. What I discovered was that the price of UF was so much higher than NM that it was rarely sold. As a result, several stores had old stock, still marked at the old "high" price, which was around $60/roll. Needless to say, I purchased several, and enjoyed the savings.

Needless to say, I'm no wireman, so the first few makeups were challenging, but it didn't take long to figure out how to work with the stuff. It's actually just as easy as the NM, maybe even a little easier. What I learned to do was score the low center side of the cable with a knife, parallel to the axis, as far as I cared to strip the jacket. Once scored, all it took was to pull the ground wire to the end of the score, which in my case was often quite some distance because the wire was fed into conduit (necessary due to the type of construction). To liberate the two conductors from the jacket, all that is necessary is to make a minor slit in the jacket from the conductor to the channel where the ground wire ran. The jacket is quite thin at that point, and tears almost effortlessly once started. You can get the wire out of the jacket very quickly----then it's just a matter of removing the insulation on the individual conductors. This system reduced the frustration level for me immeasurably. Don't know how wiremen do it.

Harold

Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

Couldn't be simpler: Grab a bit of metal & drill a hole in it a little larger than the OD of your cable (or find some metal tube with that size ID). Drill a hole through one side to the middle. File a nice sharp point on a suitable screw. Put some of your cable in the hole, screw in the screw until it bites the wire, then back it off a little. Clamp your jig to something solid & pull the cable through - the insulation will be neatly slit, & can be easily peeled off by hand. For multicore cable (sounds like what you're talking about), make another slitting jig sized for the strands.

Reply to
Lionel

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