Stripping individual conductors for recycling

Status
Not open for further replies.
George Stolz

George Stolz

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Windsor, CO NEC: 2017
Occupation
Hospital Master Electrician
To those who recycle or don't and hear from people who do:

Do you/would you strip the insulation off individual conductors, to increase the return, or just turn it in as is and say "My time is more valuable"?

Do you have a cutoff point for stripping? "Anything bigger than 12" or something like that?

Do you strip the sheathing off romex, and leave the insulation on?

I'm interested to hear all takes, but am most interested in the reasoning behind how you treat this issue, or how different employers treat the issue for their employees.

Please keep the exotic-dancing comments to a minimum, that old joke's seen enough life. :)
 
my crew strips nothing smaller than 8. what we do is throw a stripping party. 5 or 6 of us all show up and we cook out and have a few beers. all the scrap is pulled and we knife it. when it is done we pack it up and take it to the scrap yard. if there are 5 of us then we split it 5 ways. if 6 same. ect. ect. this can sometimes take 7 or 8 months before we throw a party as we save enough to make it worth our while. some times 2 or 3 thousand pounds.
 
Around here apprentices get all of the scrap wire.

Usually 6 and over gets stripped.

I've heard a lot of talk about burning the insulation off smaller wires but I've never seen it.

Aluminum wire doesn't normally get stripped. By the time you take off the insulation there's not much weight left.
 
Before copper went over $1/lb I never bothered to even keep it. Now I do and have two piles. The #2 and larger and the smaller than #2. I strip the 1st and not the 2nd.

The type W goes as is. Too much work and the rubber is almost as much weight as the copper.
 
This is a little off topic but it is interesting.

I haven?t touched a drop of anything in 10 and a half years but back in my day I saved all my cans. I would put a tablespoon of sand in each can before I crushed them.

When I saved copper I would melt a big glob with a heavy lead weight in the middle of it. Mom always told me this was stealing so I quit saving cans and copper.

Today all copper scrap is given to the help if they want it.
 
jwelectric said:
This is a little off topic but it is interesting.

I haven?t touched a drop of anything in 10 and a half years but back in my day I saved all my cans. I would put a tablespoon of sand in each can before I crushed them.

When I saved copper I would melt a big glob with a heavy lead weight in the middle of it. Mom always told me this was stealing so I quit saving cans and copper.

Today all copper scrap is given to the help if they want it.
Click to expand...

How honest were you with your customers ? Never mind i dont think i want to know.
 
Iam fixing to turn mine in just to get it out of the way.Might have 500 lbs tops.Big stuff i will strip but under #2 just not worth it.Maybe i can get my wife to strip it.
 
George,

When I was a first year apprentice and "Green" in the trade, I worked with an old timer who kept everything 14 AWG solid and bigger. He told me he sat in a chair with a glass of Vodka near a woodstove. The wire was precut to straight lengths about 18 inches long and placed them on the stove. This allowed quick stripping. He took his pump pliers and compressed the solid wire into neat tight folds. He waited till the price went up then cashed it in. I would carry the boxes of insulated wire to his car and he would strip it and bring it in for me when he was done.

Now, I personally do not have time to strip wire that small. I am part Scottish and it is against my nature to throw it away, though.

Dingokangaroo,

That sounds like a great idea.

Justin J. Walecka
 
I would strip out 2/0 cu & larger. Everything else was put in a barrel & sold to a recycler. This was years ago. I once had an apprentice who was down on his luck. So, when we did an occassional house, I let him keep all the scrap. Until I noticed when he pulled home runs, he would pull each one about 8' longer than needed.
 
We only save bare and 2/0 or larger insulated. We don't use a lot of the larger stuff.

When we recycle, I use the money to buy beer, snacks and stuff for the shop.

I had one of my better guys take some old stuff from a service change a few months ago. #2 I guess. I told him not to bother, because nobody will get around to stripping it. He swore he would, so I said you better! I threw it away 2 months later, after it sat on my shop floor the whole time.
 
With the price of new copper, I don't strip anything. Since there's no limit on the number of splices on a circuit, I just add junction boxes as needed and use the drops. Just kidding....
I give my drops to a disabled man who lives by himself.
He strips it and scraps it.
I have noticed that he's seems to be doing a lot better lately.
steve
 
I worked with a guy who devised a machine to strip it for him. He used the teeth on a gear to pull it through a hole that he had a blade installed that he could adjust to the size of the wire. Worked pretty slick. He then had it chopped into smaller pieces into a drum. Pretty heavy though when he when to move the barrel. had to use a forklift.
 
Please try not to let just anyone burn the insulation off- the pollution is so nasty. I worked for an outfit where some hicks would scrap everything down to #12 by burning it and selling for "clean" scrap- I got nowhere trying to explain the enviro. consequences, so I recommend selling it still insulated if yer not gonna strip it- I'm hoping that if a scrap processor does the cleaning, the pollution is much less.

Fav. method is a Klein hookbill on the wire, sitting down with the wire on my leg. For bigger stuff slice lengthwise and peel.
 
muskiedog said:
I worked with a guy who devised a machine to strip it for him. He used the teeth on a gear to pull it through a hole that he had a blade installed that he could adjust to the size of the wire. Worked pretty slick. He then had it chopped into smaller pieces into a drum. Pretty heavy though when he when to move the barrel. had to use a forklift.
Click to expand...


I'd like to have one of those! I strip 1/0 and bigger. We use a lot of SO cord that gets damaged and as an experiment I stripped one 50' length and just left one unstripped, it wasn't worth the difference in the price. The insulation was so heavy it was almost the same yield.
 
Back when I was an apprentice, my buddy & I saved everything no matter how small. we took it all out to a friends ranch & burned everything & sold it all as # 1. We laughed our butts off all the way to the bank especially when our Pick up was bottomed out & the back bumper was dragging the ground to the scrap yard.
But today its bad for the environment to burn it. George can agree since he is in Colorado.
There is a Scrap yard that advertise onTV here that they will strip your copper for free. So you might want to check around & hope you can find someone to do that for ya too!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top