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.
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