Sticky insulation on wires of smaller gauge + building a "jig" for stripping
hi everyone
Greetings from Oslo, Norway. I started to think about scrapping not long ago due to finding myself with some old installation cable and some copper piping I pulled from a derelict farm house my mother used to own.
I have never sold metal, but committed my first true scrapping style act when I pulled a nice extension cord from the top of a curbside trashcan a week ago lol. I own a van (its my only vehicle) and a trailer that has 2x the van's load capacity weight wise.
I am finishing my degree in Uni. but am curious about a summer gig as a "trash taxi" driver, charging people to pick up their stuff and rescuing the occasional item before I go to the recycling station lol. Realistically I will be getting mostly old bricks and stuff but maybe some trash to treasure old furniture or some defunct electronics to pillage. I just want to get paid twice.
There are a lot of people doing it and they are making money, its a sizeable town with a lot of people with compact econo box cars or no car at all, and they move or get divorced all the time. You know the deal
Anyhow, I am trying to strip some 230 V wiring rated for 16 A, i don't know what the gauge is. But am having problems with the insulation being excessively sticky. I mean badly. I pull off a long strip of insulation on one side, then I have to pick and claw at the strip left on the opposite side of the wire like crazy to get the very end of it loose so I can begin pulling it.
Will heating it work?
Has someone made some kind of contraption to heat wire to a uniform temperature before it goes ito a stripping device? I cant imagine picking up a heat gun every 5 seconds and using it for 10 before putting it down again etc, lol...
I would even consider buying one of the units with a wheel where you can pull the wire through manually, but the people who sell these things never mention the stickiness issue.
An important point in the equation is that the scrapyards here seem to pay like, 4-5 times more for stripped wire than insulated. Granted, the weight is decreased by strippping but the metal has to be weighing the most.
I have been stripping with a cheap breakaway blade knife, but would like your thoughts on building a jig that fixes the blade allowing me to pull the wire through with both hands since maintaining the correct grip/pressure on the knife over time is tough on my desk-jockey fingers.
