Burning wire vs stripping wire? - Page 2

There is. If you have the volume, drop 200k on a chopper.

if I had $250 K I would be in Humbolt county Ca. living on a pot farm.

Not illegal to burn here. The trick is to not over burn. Cool it off with the water hose and wear gloves. Any remaining coating will usually fall off with a whack or two against the ol barn. Or just rub off with the gloved hands. Throw it in a bucket of water and swish it around a little and you end up with nice shiney, clean copper! And I always get paid for no.1 copper using this process.

Btw easyrecycle, I've never tried the 55gal. drum bit. It sounds interesting. Next time I do this I'll try it and let you know how it works. Wish me luck!

I get 80 cents a lb. for insulated and I've tried stripping the small wire and it killed my hands so its not worth it to me to strip the small stuff and I wont burn it either and subject myself to any bad stuff. I'd rather get less per pound than do something illegal and dangerous to my health. but, thats just me, everyone has different ways they will do things.

Its illegal everywhere!!

Checked with the local authorities and they said it is NOT ILLEGAL here. Go figure.

Well, we're about 1,278 miles apart. Hope you payin all shipping costs! lol

Its been said on these forums before, burning PVC insulation releases heavy metals, dioxin(remember Agent Orange?)
this from a BLM person speaking about folks burning piles of wire on public land out west:
"Dioxins, commonly associated with burnt insulation, are easily absorbed and stored in fat tissue. They are known carcinogens and even low concentrations can cause serious health problems such as impaired immune system and liver function. Long-term exposure to lead, a hazardous waste that is released into soil when copper wire insulation is burned, can cause acute or chronic damage to the nervous system, and high doses of copper can cause liver and kidney damage."
If my neighbor was burning wire i would be seriously pissed.

This will be my last post on this thread because we could go on forever. I did not say burning was not hazardous. I said not illegal here. Everything now a days can be hazardous. Every time you crank your automobile, smoke a cigarette, fire up your lawnmower, fly in an airplane, burn an open fire of almost any type, etc.,etc.,etc. I could go on and on. You get the picture. Holes in the ozone, acid rain, global warming ( if you happen to buy into any of that). Just about everything you do contributes to this or something else that is bad for the environment. If someone wants to live their life indoors, safe in their little shell, scared to come outdoors because the sky might fall (or they might get skin cancer from the sun, or have to breath smelly air, or have to drink water from the hose pipe), well that's their choice. Me? I'm gonna live my life to the fullest and enjoy every minute of it.

****ation, KZ...you and Injun Joe are going to cause me to have a cardiac with your hilarious posts....which no doubt fly over the head of the majority...oh, my sides...Thank you.

Along the environmental lines...I saw this on TV a bit ago and looked it up to vote. 84% are absolutely stupid.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know...the-epa/11778/

burning is quicker, and most yards dont care, they want that copper as well, as far as calling the cops on ya... id say stockpile it up and tak ur business elsewhere.. that is if u do enough volume to even hurt their feelings... BUT, i also do not know about other state laws with pollution, so dont quote me plz...

I can't even burn plywood here.

Plywood (& customwood - MDF) has a urea/formaldehyde glue holding it together.
When you burn it it releases it into the air, its really bad for you.

Methanol, if its drunken, breaks down into the body into formaldehyde & that does something to the back of your eyes & makes you go blind.
You might remember hearing about bad 'homebrew' alcohol or people (most likely in Russia) drinking methanol, or even adding it to their alcohol & dieing or going blind, thats how it happens.

I will try the hotpot method, melting the plastic off in a pot on a fire & see what happens, I will report back.

A while ago I put some plastic coated wire into a tin can & added Dichloromethane (DCM - paintstripper) to it.
The plastic swelled up to 3 or 4 times its size over a couple of days & turned into a pasta like consistency while still on the wire.
I then let it evaporate off & it went back to what it was like beforehand.
Very very interesting.
DCM is not really flammable, its got a boiling point of 40Deg C, pretty low actually.

I could slip the expanded plastic off the copper wire real easily.
I think if one got a barrel of loose plastic coated wire & added DCM & then let it absorb & then did some other action, like centrifugal force or something.
The plastic would slide off the wire & leave the brightest coloured copper you ever saw.

Problem now would be loosing the DCM to the atmosphere when removing the copper wire.
The DCM in the plastic could be easily recovered by just heating the plastic & condensing it again, maybe back into a second drum of covered wire. Thanks to its low boiling point.

Expressing the mix might work, a properly made drum with a potato masher like part in it that would push the wire to the bottom of the drum, while the DCM/plastic gets pushed thru the masher up above it.
Like a coffee plunger pot.

I'm gonna work on this idea, as I'm making it up in my head as I type.....

I live in the middle of no where on a farm and we have to burn our garbage. We don't have recyling out here in the country. Everyone burns burns everything, plastic, wood, anything and everything. We can also burn tires but they have a limit of one a day or something like that. I am a big conservationist and plant all kinds or trees and shrubs all around my property every year. It is a fact of life out here. Our small towns even do it. Some one comes and picks up there garbage and burns it all at the edge of town. To get to the point I end up burning my wires. I may start just stripping them but the plastic still goes into the burn pit. I know the ultimate goal is more money for our scrap so I like learning new ways and suggestions from people who know more about this job than I do. Thanks guys.