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I am new to scrapping and recently stripped some cable wire (coaxial wire) and in the middle there was this long thin hard wire that had foam insulation around it. It is the same color as copper but it is also magnetic. I dont know what metal this is or if its worth scrapping. It is very bendable and does not snap when you bend it. It appears to be silverish when I filed it down. Any help? Cant send a pic because my camera is currently not working...
I think that is copper clad steel wire.
That is called "copper clad coax", it's a copper plating over steel wire, a magnet will love it.
Copper-clad steel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think youre right. Some of the google images look the stuff I have just larger. This is very thin. Im assuming its not worth anything?
hey tg, you might just have a chance in this field, there's tons of horror stories on smf about guys stripping a whole pile of that stuff before being told by the yard it was only shred(and getting laughed at by the guy behind em with the fiberglass ladder to scrap ; )
Yupp, I've done that. A whole roll of the crap, it was pretty embarrassing to walk in thinking about walking out with 20's in my hand only to walk out with 20 pennies (not pre-1982 btw)Quote:
Originally Posted by Bear
Some yards will have you throw it into the shred pile while others don't even want to see it.
haha thanks bear, I sure hope so. Fortunately I had my magnet ready so only spent a few minutes stripping this junk down before realizing it wasnt copper.
Hrrm. I got some of this the other day, 10 or 20 feet of it, a buddy dropped off along with some towers and other assorted goodies. Magnet doesn't react to it all. Guess I got some of the good kind eh? Copper braiding around a white insert with a nice solid piece of copper in it. Not a very thick piece of copper mind you, but still!
Maybe I'll just save it for garland for the Christmas tree this year. LOL.
Sirscrapalot - Happiness? A good cigar, a good meal, a good cigar and a good woman - or a bad woman; it depends on how much happiness you can handle. - George Burns
Yep, as has been mentioned, copper clad steel :-( However, if U are into stripping wire, not all coax is equally useless. Most Ham Radio coax, i.e. RG8, RG8x,RG58, RG213 and so on, has both a true copper center and an outer copper braiding.
Some pics and info > types of coax cable - Google Search
Also, the connectors are brass :-)
Good luck