I bought this wire stripper on eBay for $17.95 + $14.95 shipping.
Newest Manual Cable Wire Copper Recycling Stripping Stripper Machine Strip Gold | eBay
Pros: It works pretty good, and is easy to use. Comes with three blades which can be re-sharpened.
Cons: It uses only one blade and two wheels. The problem with this is that the wire occasionally pops out from between the three points of contact. I can definitely see how the four blades on a CopperMine style stripper would work much better. The only other problem that I had with it was that the mounting bolts that came with it were only 1 1/2" so they were too short to use for mounting it to my workbench, and I had to find some longer bolts.
Results: I took 2lbs of mixed solid insulated wire of lengths ranging from about 6" to 4'. It took me 46 minutes to strip it which may be slow to others but was way faster than I could have done it with a utility knife. I was left with 1.6lbs of #1 Copper. My yard only pays 1 price for insulated wire regardless of type. So at my prices, I get $1 for the insulated stuff (.50X2), and $4.16 (2.60X1.6) for the #1. The net difference is only $3.16, which works out to an hourly rate of $4.12. Not worth it in my opinion. Not to mention, that I'm still going to need to strip about 19 more lbs of wire just to cover the cost of the stripper.
Hope this helps anyone considering one of these, but remember your results may be much better or worse than mine.
Bookmarks