Purchased some scrap copper wire.

That's right. I purchased some scrap copper wire. I have an electrician that was willing to sell me his scraps before he took them into the scrap yard. He doesn't strip the wire and he doesn't separate it either. He sold me 225lbs at current yard prices for #2 insulated. I purchased a drill operated wire stripper last year and haven't used it for quite a few months. Now I will get some good used out of it. Most of the wire is #10 which goes through the stripper fast. I have some larger stuff as well as seen in the photos. So far I have stripped about 30 lbs in less than a couple hours. At this time, I may sell the shiny when I am finished stripping it. I would then purchase some more, rinse and repeat. I should have a steady flow of wire for a long time. I know, I know. I have to account for my time during this process but I am not worried about my time. I strip a little bit here and there when the kids are in bed and the wife is at work. I figure I will more than double my money and I don't have to go scavenging around to find copper wire. I will see about making some more videos showing my wire stripper in action. Have fun!
http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...psh8mfh0li.jpg

http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...ps6fbarcbj.jpg

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Well there you go! Congrats! Keep on...

Will be interested to see how much you pure copper you get and how much profit? Thanks for sharing

Nice. I'm looking at different strippers myself;)...several to choose from in all price ranges o:). Getting a steady supply from an electrician would make my decision easier.

Congrats on the score.

Good buy. Sparkys are a good supply source ,not just for wire.
I buy for a little less than yard price, but I pick up saving them a trip to the yard.

indeed if you like doing and use that time when you can why not make money as well. hope you gets lots and it keeps ya in a good cash flow even get enough to buy a electric stripper have even more fun the one I got is loud and eats way for than I get in but feeding it is a lot of fun

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Originally Posted by Swampy

Nice. I'm looking at different strippers myself;)...several to choose from in all price ranges o:). Getting a steady supply from an electrician would make my decision easier.

Congrats on the score.

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My wife won't let me look at strippers......

I would be interested to see how you sort it to strip it, looks like a mix of tons of wires, I dumpster dive for wire electricians throw away all different AWG"s and it takes so long to seperate, and what strips 10 gauge doesn't strip 12 gauge, lots of setting. Nice buy.

Correction. Most of the wire is #8 not #10. Even better! Devin, the wire is indeed a big spaghetti mess. I won't be sorting the wire per say, I am just grabbing a wire out of the mess one at a time. I pull the wire as far as it will come out of the mess and cut it with the my side cutters. I get a few chunks of wire free from the mess and head to the work bench where my stripper is mounted. So far I have stripped around 50lbs. I haven't had any issues except that I want to strip wire all the time right now. It is so fast and so easy to strip wire using the drill stripper. By the way, I am using a copperminetools drill powered stripper. I am considering purchasing more wire because I can't get the dollar signs out of my mind. My electrician guy has 3 huge crates full of wire so there is plenty more I could pick up. More updates to come.

Gotta figure 225 pounds must = 190 to 200 pounds of #1 to dare I say BB . A honest yard will pay BB , some get all picky about wire thickness.
Wile market seems stable in it's new range of prices . Buying to much is great if copper goes up . If you purchase like 600 pounds
you could have so much time needed to get work done 3 things will happen

copper stays at same price
copper goes up
copper goes down

Since the correction of prices , I am happy we seem to have stability & now I realize any thing can happen
#2 copper @ .75 not imposable , not likely But never say never .
It's safest when you buy based on the % spread you have in your head . But figure Cu during spring seems to go up
so a fast purchases now could yield a better % spread .

$2.73 is copper spot it was $2.77 and popped down a bit .
This spring leading to summer is any ones guess - be careful - get it - process it - sell it - don't linger during these turbulent times .

Often I wish I sold all my motors wile I could of gotten .26 # and thats free find motors . So when you buy act fast ,
the market is fast.

Nice!! You might have to smuggle that that big bright pile out all in disguise so no one sees you but probably in your neighborhood, they'd probably just go "hmm" and not give it a second thought :lol:

Update. I have stripped about 3/4 of the copper wire I purchased thus far. I have roughly 130 lbs stripped with a good pile left to go. I have stripped wire a bit at a time but I have not spent a whole lot of time doing it. I figure I have less than 5 hours into this batch of wire. I can strip many feet in mere seconds with my copperminetools.com stripper. Below are photos from tonight. Once I am finished with this round of stripping, I think I will sell and I will pick up more from my electrician friend. I spoke with him the other day and he is more than willing to sell me more.

This length of wire is probably 40+ feet long. I put it through the stripper in less than a minute. It is just as quick to peel the insulation off the wire.
http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...psx85ltfwk.jpg

The rubbermaid tote weighs about 100lbs. The red bucket has the big stuff and some copper that was tarnished. I am gonna see if the scrap yard will take it all as bare bright. Otherwise, it would go as #2 and thats only 15-20 cents less per pound, not too big a deal.
http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...psinufvudb.jpg

This is my set up. The drill is an older one that my dad had sitting around. It works great and it hasn't burnt up yet. The copperminetools.com wire stripper came with two blades. The one you see installed is used for the larger wires. The other blade is pinched between two wire guides. The wire guides really make a great path for the smaller wires to go though the stripper smooth without sliding out. I will have to take more photos of the other blade. Have fun!
http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...psp6iqqxvf.jpg

All done!


http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...psj9jlcqum.jpg

Some of the wire was used and corroded. But at least I will get #2 copper wire for it.
http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...psgp4kfy4z.jpg

I think I will keep the thick stuff and see if it will sell on ebay for jewelery hobbiests.
http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...psq3ivntxa.jpg

Here are my totals before I take it into Scrapmart.
The big stuff: 12lbs
Tarnished/corroded wire: 8.2lbs
Gray tote: 107 lbs
Red tote: 71 lbs.

Subtract the weight of the totes probably 5 or 6 lbs. Gonna be a nice payday. I will be going back to my electrician next week to get more as he has plenty to sell me. Have fun!

Very cool!! Nice work M :lol:

Very nice!

I see your stripped totals, what was the pre-stripping weight you paid him on?

About 225lbs is what I purchased. I agreed to pay slightly higher than the local yards. Yards were paying 60 cents per. I offered 75 cents. Once I weighed out what I wanted we calculated the price which my electrician guy rounded down to an even number. After it was settled, I ended up paying 67 cents per. I am happy with that and he was more than happy when I pulled the Benjamins out of my pocket. He didn't have change so I kept one and will settle up on the next pick up this week. He has 3 huge bins of scrap wire from various jobs. I have as much wire as I want. I am thinking this next round I will pick up at least 300lbs. The blade on my stripper is in good shape and I have a way to sharpen the circular blades(google Sharp and Spark). However, I think I will order a couple more blades from copperminetools.com for $9.99 each. Will continue with updates as I continue. Cha Ching.

Update: Made a trip to my scrap buyer. I had some other scrap to turn in along with all that sexy copper. I had some aluminum, motors, and a tiny bit of stainless. I opened up a nice bit of room in my shop hauling this stuff in. I now have more space to load up with insulated copper. Back to the copper. I was expecting around 80% or so copper from the wire I stripped. If the website calculated it right, I got 84% copper. That's a good haul. I did keep the 12lbs of larger cable for now. I am going to cut it to fit in a USPS flat rate box and see if people want to buy it on ebay. I have seen auctions for bare copper used for jewelry or casting custom bars and such. I have seen auctions bring $3.50 per lb or more. We'll see what happens and I will give you an update. I am excited to get more copper and to strip it down. I will continue to post updates of my future purchases and stripping adventures.

Here's what I brought home today. Some will go for more insulated wire, the rest will get saved for tools or other income generating purchases. Have Fun!
http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...psfytngprf.jpg

Price of copper is up nicely today, you may have to pay a bit extra next load. I buy wire from my job, we build and re-build industrial equipment. I love the rebuild wire because it has a lot of #2/#4 AWG wire. I pay a multiplyer on the copper spot price from previous day, might want to figure something like that out so you don't have to spend a lot of time coming up with a price out of thin air. I pay .24 spot price, so at 2.75 I pay 66c per pound etc... Good luck and may the copper keep flowing!

Back again. I went and purchased more insulated copper wire today. However, today wasn't quite as good as last time. The electrician I buy from had taken a few hundred pounds of wire into the yard himself and was paid #1 insulated. The bad deal for me is the wire he took in was either #14 or #12, nothing larger. After all my research here and on you tube I have been led me to believe #1 insulated wire, if stranded, was the size of a #2 pencil lead or larger. Any stranded wire smaller is #2 insulated. So, on my first purchase I paid roughly 70 cents per for a majority of #8 wire. That worked out very well and I was very excited. So a question for everyone, did I short change my guy the first time or is he short changing me this time? I told him the yard made a bad deal(good for him) and they are losing money on the wire they bought from him. Well, he wanted #1 insulated price for todays pickup and I agreed. Most of the wire this time was large stuff and a lot of #4 or #6. I picked up 300lbs and paid the $1.10 per for #1 insulated. I am a little disappointed as I was expecting to pick up 400lbs with the cash I had. I do not go to the same yard he does as they have a bad setup and it is a mess to deal with them. Are they giving him #1 price for the amount of wire he brings in since he is an electrical contractor? Did the yard employee screw up and pay him #1 for actual #2 wire? I can't complain as I will still make a good profit but I feel like the yard just messed up my gig. At lease copper is on the rise and maybe I will get a little more when I sell the stripped wire. I will have some photos soon and I may shoot some video showing my process for stripping. Have fun!

There is a lot of give and take in wore pricing, and most scrap pricing in general. Before I moved, I averaged .03 per lb above street price, and street price was usually pretty good to start off.

wire pricing I usually did a little better. especially the "romex" aka solid core housing wire. that I was getting sometime .60 over street price. basically I was getting my % over what it should have been payed at, and they were payiong people low prices that didnt know what it was worth.

Do you research on here to see what things really are worth.(you do this already)
Get to know the employees at the yard, especially management.
Bring in an average of 300 lb or more of non ferrous at a time, trying to keep things over 20 lb each.
Sort very well, and ask questions.
Make your truck fast and easy to unload. They know who is wasting their time or making their job harder.

All your pictured wire would've been #1 insulated at my yards... they like thicker than a pencil lead or if you bend it and it holds its shape...

Some pictures of my second load of insulated copper wire. So far, in less than 1 hour, I have stripped 100lbs. I have stripped the larger diameter wire by hand with a utility knife. The largest diameter wire is MCM 250. It is pretty easy to cut along the length of the wire with the knife. The insulation just pulls right off. I have also relocated my drill powered wire stripper from my garage to my shop. It is somewhat noisy while running in the garage and can wake up the wife and kids if I strip for a prolonged period of time. The shop is away from the house and I can make as much noise as I want. I will have some photos from the shop in the next couple days showing the cart with my stripper mounted to it. I have a lot more room in the shop also so I can store the cable without taking up garage space.

This time I purchased 300lbs. My electrician is removing the wire from a school that is slated to be torn down. Sounds like that could be thousands of pounds. I hope I can get some of it to strip for my third load.
http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...psjjdvfzdr.jpg

This is a piece of the larger diameter wire. This wire came in 3 to 4 foot lengths so I stripped it by hand.
http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...ps4tjqycsg.jpg

This is a photo showing how I use the utility knife to cut the wire and then pull it out of the insulation. This is pretty quick and easy but my shoulder is a little sore from having to apply pressure to the knife as I pull it down the wire.
http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...psdy5u8pzz.jpg

WoW!!

Hey again. I am halfway through load #2 of stripping insulated copper wire for cash. It goes pretty fast so I am already planning to purchase more from my electrician friend. As stated, I will do another video showing the stripper cutting through larger cables. Check it out!

http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/scrap...tml#post245580

Nice video! Looks like it will be a nice little haul.

I can't speak highly enough about foot pedals. If I were you I would have a foot pedal controlling the drill to free up both of your hands. You could put a hose clamp around the trigger of the drill and crank it down just tight enough to run the drill at about 1/2 speed. And it would be adjustable for when you wanted to run flat out for short stuff.

If you had nice long strands you could even feed about a foot though and start the separation of copper and plastic and separate the two as it's coming through the stripper. No more wasted time (and back) of shooting it on the floor then picking it up, starting the separation then doing it all by hand.

I know you're doing well and making money but I'm a huge advocate of eliminating steps. When I get my stripper up and running I will make a video of what I'm describing.

This method wouldn't make sense for all wire or lengths but the blue stuff you sent through in your video is a prime candidate of wire you can save steps on while stripping.

Hope you see that 1000# from the school!

A couple more videos.

http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/scrap...ash-money.html

Yea that's for sure #1 copper. #2 and your getting ripped off. Nice!