Stripping Cable to Bright Copper home methods?

Ive various plastic coated copper cables left after slitting the steel armoured sheath off
with a Cobalt bladed Stanley by hand
and these thinner cables are much trickier to hold down and slit lengthways to get bright copper.
Very time consuming.
Any quick ways to strip plastic off?
Burning?
Acid?
=messy.
looking at placing forcing the twisted cable in an alu u section screwed to a board and running some sort of a hobby
buzz saw along its length to mash off the plastic.
Ever heard of this?
Machines look too big heavy expensive bulky noisy.

For starting out stripping wire you may want to try this little one out. I bought this one about 2 years ago when I really started doing more with wire. It can handle various sizes of #1 insulated and can even do #2 insulated wire fairly easily. I still use it today and it works like a champ.

https://www.amazon.com/Stripper-Mach...ateway&sr=8-53

A razor sideways as if shaving the wire is faster for smaller wires. Works best with tension. My personal preference is to strip only very thick wire like MCM and spend that time instead sourcing more wire.

Whats the size of the wire & its insulation?

Have you stripped a section of the wire and weighed it, so you can find out your $$ returns before & after stripping it?
Like, to just figure out how much more $ you will get by stripping it & how much that works out to be per hour of extra work.

Whats the amount of wire that you have? 10 lbs or 220 lbs?

Hi All.The machine link looked interesting but some reviews say its difficult to get replacement blades.?
that plastic is tougher than it looks.Tried drill scouring it with a wire wool eraser head but only does
small sections at a time and takes too long to penetrate to metal.Just roughs up surface.

There could be a fair amount in future.Difficult to say.

Am going to look for edging strip today to hold wire as its slit,

I've recently made some strippers for 18,16,and 14 ga stranded out of scrap material. There are a couple of different types that slit the wire legnthwise but the basic principle is the same. Check out the different youtube videos and you'll get the idea.

This one you can buy ready made.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/WSA-wire-st...77WY:rk:2:pf:0

On the cheap you can put a board in a vice or other type holding device. Drill a hole a little larger than the wire you want to strip. Sharpen the point of a drywall/deck screw and screw it into the board so the tip enters the side of the hole you drilled.

Now insert the wire a little bit, tighten the drywall/deck screw until it pierces the plastic of the wire. Use some pliers to pull the wire through the hole in the board. Cheap and adjustable.

Personally I vote for selling the wire as is and use the extra time finding more stuff to scrap or read more of the forum for more ideas. 73, Mike

I'm fairly new to copper and aluminum but the thing that bugs me is the grading at the yard. I don't feel as though i would get very much for insulated if they graded it as 30% recovery. It takes some of the guesswork out of it if it's been stripped to bright copper.

That said ...it's still a bit sketchy cause bare bright isn't always bare bright. 14 Ga. and thicker solid is almost certain to be classed as bare bright. 14 Ga. and thinner stranded wire could be downgraded to #2 or maybe even light copper. Then there's tinned copper. You run into that a lot with stranded wire. Silvery colored copper ought to be kept off by itself.

Maybe it gets easier after you've been doing it for awhile ?

https://www.amazon.com/WL-100-Stripp...=1557073176949


https://i.postimg.cc/kGsfpbnm/bluerock.jpg


This one works fine.

Granted, I won't bother stripping lamp cord gauge and smaller.

Romex & thicker gauge wire only... works great on TV degaussing cables, too

When i was burning of the plastic coating ( it was a few years ago.. ) from car wiring looms, where i had taken all of the outer tape & plastic wraping & plugs & little Brass connectors off, ie as clean as is possible.
I was getting a 2/3rds return.
So from 30 Kg of plastic coated wire, i was getting at the most 20kg of Copper wire back.

I was good at it too, setting it up to burn properly & cool quickly & washing it as soon as possible afterwards.
Thats what got me the last 6 - 16%.

But now i just sell my random wire 'as is' with the plastic coating on it, no plugs or connectors & only one layer of plastic insulation.

Its a lot of extra & very dirty work to burn it off, it does create a nice $ bonus, but the Environmental aspect is bigger now, they will go out of their way to stop people burning it off and find out who has.

I dont get as much wire now, dont need the extra $ as much, dont want the extra very very dirty work and im quite sure i dont want the attention either.

But, 2/3's Copper return is probably a high average.
If you have not figured out all of the tips & tricks of burning, you would be lucky to get 50% Copper back.
I wouldn't even think of burning off in America..