My Experience Stripping Cat 5 Wire: Not Good

I decided to try and strip some Cat 5 wire (maybe it was 5E or Cat 6, but similar to Cat 5), since I saw a roughly 4-5 foot length that was already partially split. So I thought I'd give it a shot. The outside layer came off pretty easily. So far so good.

Then I noticed three or four twisted pairs inside. With at least two of the twisted pairs I noticed that one of the wires was bare bright. Even though the wire was very skinny, bare bright was beckoning. So- how hard could it be to untwist one of the twisted pairs? It turns out that it took a good 20-30 minutes just to untwist a single pair. When I tried pulling it apart, the wire would get tangled up and it would take a while to untangle it. Yet each twist was only about 3/4" or 1" from the next one. So it was pretty tightly twisted.

Bottom line- it was a lot of work for something that looked pretty easy at the beginning. The wire was super thin and it is hard to imagine that I will end up getting more than an extra 10 cents or so for my 20-30 minutes of work.
I looked for videos on Youtube and couldn't find anything that seemed to justify the extra labor. Also looked for messages on this site, but didn't find anything promising.

Does anyone else know if there are any shortcuts that make stripping Cat 5 and similar types of wire worthwhile? Or do you prefer to sell it as insulated Cat 5 wire?

Sell it as Cat 5.

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Originally Posted by jimicrk

Sell it as Cat 5.

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Do what he said. And you learned something along the way. You won't soon forget it. I had a wire stipper and got rid of it because it wasn't worth it for me. Find what area works best for you and get good at it. 73, Mike

Somebody could probably engineer a way to untwist it with a bearing, and then a way to straighten it out. Whatever you do, don't waste your time with CAT patch cables. They use a fine stranded wire that recovers about half of the weight of the solid core longer run wire.

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Originally Posted by jimicrk

Sell it as Cat 5.

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This. With most individual wire stripping tools you're likely better off spending time spending more time sourcing wire to sell as is rather than stripping except for some 75% insulated and above (with some exceptions). At least if you're looking for a certain return per time spent, meaning depending on how much of the wire stripping is hobby and how much is for income.

Guys, thanks VERY MUCH for your comments. It feels good to have confirmation that there is no trick to stripping Cat 5 in a way that justifies the time spent!

I had some telephone cable that I stripped.
. It had the outer blue tube covering & 4 sets of 2 twisted wires & a opaque 4 pointed star shaped plastic insert holding them in place.
I spent some time stripping off the blue tubing ,& the plastic separator & pretty much got ripped off when I sold the plastic coated wire later on.
It was 4 big sacks of it that I carried home.
After stripping of the blue tube & separator I worked out that the Copper wire twisted strands would give a 85% return. Meaning that the Copper wire was 85% of the weight & it was covered by plastic weighing 15% of the weight. Normal return is 66% for single insulation household wire.

I was expecting to get paid better $ than normal, since the Copper return was quite high, & as a single solid Copper wire strand, after it's been thru the chopping machine, the two materials would seperate easily.
Nah.....
In hindsight I should have made a better effort & burned the plastic off. 2 full sacks of it would burn off easy & being a solid Copper wire, wouldn't oxidise much. The plastic, being thin, would burn off quickly & clean.

So in the end I had put a lot of extra time & effort into it, that I didn't get any extra $$ for doing.
I'd just sell it 'as is', they probably have their own price category as mentioned above, and move on.

To untwist wires like that, fix one end of the wire & stretch it out & clamp the other end in a electric drill chuck & start it up ( maybe in reverse ) & untwist it.

I thought that they pay decent money for it for the insulation, not really the copper recovery. I heard it was teflon coated, but wiki says polyethylene or aka pvc insulated.

I had one little stretch of wire which resembled Cat 5 except that it probably had 20-25 strands of wire (no kidding) inside it. The yard just had me include it with the Cat 5. By the way, I got 60 cents/lb. for insulated Cat 5 in the past few days. I'd like to see how they turn it into bare bright without spending a lot of time.

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Originally Posted by recyclersteve

I had one little stretch of wire which resembled Cat 5 except that it probably had 20-25 strands of wire (no kidding) inside it. The yard just had me include it with the Cat 5. By the way, I got 60 cents/lb. for insulated Cat 5 in the past few days. I'd like to see how they turn it into bare bright without spending a lot of time.

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Probably a granulator

Hard work you put to get the copper is 68% from those wire. Rest are rubber. So Its better to sell it off to the mill where they grind and recover the copper part with granulator. I have heard that a mid size capacity granulator machine could process 250 KG per hrs. A project I love to take up doing in my local city (city chennai-country India) along with the proposed aluminium recycling start-up which I have planned some months ago. But getting funded by banks is more difficult than the illusion of dreaming about the idea.

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Originally Posted by sathyashrayan

Hard work you put to get the copper is 68% from those wire. Rest are rubber. So Its better to sell it off to the mill where they grind and recover the copper part with granulator. I have heard that a mid size capacity granulator machine could process 250 KG per hrs. A project I love to take up doing in my local city (city chennai-country India) along with the proposed aluminium recycling start-up which I have planned some months ago. But getting funded by banks is more difficult than the illusion of dreaming about the idea.

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From what I have learned from others is that recovering copper from wire as a side to a much bigger scrap business that can sustain the costs and employees works well.

Those who try to just run a copper recovery operation suffer from a constant need to buy quality wire to keep their granulators and employees working. Like most other things its a tough business. 73, Mike

I do not regret my wire stripper, one of the most valuable tools I have. I got about $34 worth of #2 copper spending less than 40 minutes stripping car battery cables and cutting off the ends. That said I don't bother to strip every wire I collect. I still take loads of low grade and #2 insulated wire to cash in large and small.

I would never bother to try and strip cat 5/6. It's a PITA enough just making the cables. I got $.69/lb my last load of them not sure if that's good as a nationwide price but it's OK here.