Buying Insulated wire at scrap price to strip worth it?

Hi guys, I work at an electrical cabinet fab shop. We generate gaylords full of scrap insulated wires, anywhere from thin 20 gauge to 1.0 gauge, it is just a mix of all of these. At what price would it be worth buying this wire to strip? I have an electric copper wire stripper. I have found that really, only 14 gauge and larger is worth stripping, so my plan would be to buy all the wire since it doesn't get sorted, strip the good stuff for No 1 copper, then the rest that is insulated I can sell for insulated price.

Any thoughts? Has anyone bought insulated copper wire to strip and know the price you should be asking? Should I just buy for the current insulted price in my area?

Thanks

Buying is a speculative because prices go up and down so much. Stripped out copper wire could drop to less that what you paid for the insulated wire if the market bottomed out. About all you can do is pay your money and take your chances.

I bought about three hundred pounds of #1 insulated from one of the local scrappers two summers ago. I invested in a motorized machine and gradually stripped it out to bare bright in my free time. It sold as berry copper last winter when prices were high. It was enough to pay for the machine and put a little cash in my wallet.

One thing i would say ... it's quite a bit of time to strip out any amount of it even with the machine. I think that's why the local scrapper sold it to me. He's got a regular full time job and the shear amount of it got ahead of him and started piling up in his shop. He did the easy part by stripping the ground out of the romex but couldn't seem to complete the task by stripping out the two strands of insulated THHN.

There's only so much a fulla can do in the course of a day so you have to budget your time and energy accordingly. If you have a wife and a family ... you need to spend some time with them every day too.

If you buy at low price, maybe. If you buy from a scrap yard, probably not.

I would start by asking the owner of the wire how much they want for it. With that much weight, they might be getting a higher price than joe shmoe off the street. But usually, they would want equal to the scrap yard or more cause they can always sell it to the yard if you dont make a higher bid. Or they can have a contract with the scrapyard. I never bought wire, but you got to know what the market is doing and now its in a downward trend. but who knows, you can try it and see what happens. there's only 1 way to find out

I have been doing this for several months now. I only buy the solid core wire. The heavier the better. I try for $1.00 a pound. My last purchase of 100 pounds I ended up paying $1.60 a pound. I have already finished pulling the romex cover off the last batch. I still have to remove the insulation off the individual wires. I sell in various places always aiming to double (or better my investment)

I live on the west coast. The closest scrap yard is a 2 hour drive through the redwoods and over the mountains. They also don't pay crap so I do not sell copper to them. I deal with a great scrapyard with very good prices but he is in Las Vegas. So I ship mostly by UPS. Even with freight I can at least double my money. By the way that scrap yard advertises here on the forum. He is JJinLV. Here is his forum link. https://www.scrapmetalforum.com/scra...tml?highlight= I do reccommend JJ a lot. Once he gets my shipments the payout is in my bank within a couple of days.

Right now, to make my life easier I am building a stripper the smashes the wire between to solid rollers. Almost done, actually it runs too fast. I am going to add an extra set of pulleys to slow it down some more. I have the wire stripper machine with the cutting wheel. I like it a lot but I always like to tinker and invent.

Another point I forgot to mention is what quality and size you'll deal with. OP mentions "gaylords full of scrap insulated wires, anywhere from thin 20 gauge to 1.0 gauge, it is just a mix of all of these". Size matters for reselling the clean berry copper, but also if you need to adjust your stripper all the time. If you need to sort your wires by size first and/or readjust your stripper all the time is time-consuming on the long run (time = money). Also, with smaller gauge, it takes more time to get the same volume/weight a larger wire does.

I recently made copper oxide for a lady who does pottery.

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