Breaking Down Large Spools??

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jmellc

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Durham, NC
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Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
An EC at the plant has been pulling 500 MCM tray cable. I sure haven’t missed doing that. 🤣
I walked by Friday morning & saw 2 guys breaking down big wooden spools. These were huge, about 4-5 foot diameter, core probably 2 foot or so. They had a stack of round ends & a stack of slats.
I never saw these broken down before unless they were damaged. Most all of them went back to the supply houses, best I knew. So I guess now they are treated as scrap lumber?
 
ptonsparky said:
I've seen wood boxes the pivot guy gets his parts in. A few of those would build a house.
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I see a lot of that too. Crates of every size & type. Some have what appears to be high grade plywood. Smooth surface & sort of reddish color. Pallets too with various quality & sizes. I broke diwn an 8 foot pallet last week @ kept several good pieces ; 2.5 inch by 3.5 inch. Excellent for leveraging large panel covers or various other prying.
 
jmellc said:
An EC at the plant has been pulling 500 MCM tray cable. I sure haven’t missed doing that. 🤣
I walked by Friday morning & saw 2 guys breaking down big wooden spools. These were huge, about 4-5 foot diameter, core probably 2 foot or so. They had a stack of round ends & a stack of slats.
I never saw these broken down before unless they were damaged. Most all of them went back to the supply houses, best I knew. So I guess now they are treated as scrap lumber?
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I have a friend here that built his own house bit by bit.
he broke these down for years and used the slats for his walls. Screwed them to the studs, went over them with a light brass brush on a grinder, then stained them.
when he told me that, my first thought was it would look like crap.

It actually looked really good the way he did it.
 
Hv&Lv said:
I have a friend here that built his own house bit by bit.
he broke these down for years and used the slats for his walls. Screwed them to the studs, went over them with a light brass brush on a grinder, then stained them.
when he told me that, my first thought was it would look like crap.

It actually looked really good the way he did it.
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I’d like to see that.
 
The wooden reels we sell back to a supply house. The large metal flange reels we send back because they care a hefty price if you loose them.
 
My favorite barbecue restaurant uses several of those big spools for tables, with tall chairs.

Stained and urethaned, it gives a nice rustic look
 
augie47 said:
Many a rural south country boy have a reel table.
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Oh I have mixed emotions about those reel/spools.
The good...........we had a picnic table made out of one, lots of homemade ice cream and watermelon eaten off it.

The bad...........My Dad brought one home (might have been the one that was made into a picnic table)
Us kids figured out it was a good play toy. We would lay it over so that it would roll. We would stand on it and make it roll to see how far we could go without falling. Kind of like log rolling without the water.

My neighbor (girl) was on it and not having much luck getting it started. I step up to the rescue and give it a push. Guess she wasn't ready for it and fell. Turns out she broke her arm. My Dad had to pay for her broken arm and decided to break my butt!
 
My wife will get mad at me if I bring home any more as tables


“ shoot low boys their riding shetland ponies”
 
jmellc said:
An EC at the plant has been pulling 500 MCM tray cable. I sure haven’t missed doing that. 🤣
I walked by Friday morning & saw 2 guys breaking down big wooden spools. These were huge, about 4-5 foot diameter, core probably 2 foot or so. They had a stack of round ends & a stack of slats.
I never saw these broken down before unless they were damaged. Most all of them went back to the supply houses, best I knew. So I guess now they are treated as scrap lumber?
Click to expand...
What is supply house going to do with them? Maybe a few can be used for winding partial reel purchases on but other than that they take up space and don't make them any $$$. Don't know if wire and cable manufacturers want them or not, but who is going to send them with no incentive for doing so?

They do make good firewood though
 
My brother used to work at a place that sold forklift trucks. They came and wooden crates. They used to throw the them away so my brother would take them and tear them apart and sell the plywood and 2x3's in kits to make sheds out of. There was a bunch of nails that he would pull out where they put them together that he had to take out and he sold those scrap. Don't think he got a whole lot for the scrap nails but he had a pretty good business going on the side with shed kits.
 
Back in '98 I got to take home a half dozen of those reel from a job we were working. Before that, there was a deposit on the reels so they went back to the supply house. They don't last long outside, but for inside it seems like the last forever and they do make good tables.
 
kwired said:
What is supply house going to do with them? Maybe a few can be used for winding partial reel purchases on but other than that they take up space and don't make them any $$$. Don't know if wire and cable manufacturers want them or not, but who is going to send them with no incentive for doing so?

They do make good firewood though
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Graybar reuses them, and charge for them if they are not returned. They have a wire cutting machine that they send out the cut pieces on the reels that are brought back. They usually have “Return to Graybar” in red lettering on them, but we seldom send them back.
 
hillbilly1 said:
Graybar reuses them, and charge for them if they are not returned. They have a wire cutting machine that they send out the cut pieces on the reels that are brought back. They usually have “Return to Graybar” in red lettering on them, but we seldom send them back.
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Same with my supplier, but i don’t think they’ve ever charged me for not returning them. I make an effort to always get them back unless broken; helps to make sure I’m getting spools on cut wire that I order from their inventory and not just a crate full of cut pieces.


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I don't know if we still do but I think at one time at least some of our wire suppliers had a separate charge for the spool that got refunded if you returned it. Most of our wire comes from local distributors that have trucks that deliver to us every day so it's not real hard to return them, if they need to be returned.
 
hillbilly1 said:
Graybar reuses them, and charge for them if they are not returned. They have a wire cutting machine that they send out the cut pieces on the reels that are brought back. They usually have “Return to Graybar” in red lettering on them, but we seldom send them back.
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My suppliers never ask for reels back and yet still seem to have plenty of reels for cut lengths to go on.

If you want shorter cuts (like under 100 feet) they kind of prefer to not put them on a reel and that often isn't too bad to handle either. Longer cuts are a pain to handle sometimes if they aren't on a reel.
 
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