In recent years the price of many metals has been near or at all time highs.
Because of this, people have been looking for all kinds of scrap metal to sell.
As you probably already know if you are reading this, one of the most popular and lucrative kinds of scrap metal to sell is wire.
Get the Best Price for Your Wire
To get the best price for wire it needs to have the insulation stripped off, and for that you will need a scrap wire stripper unless you plan to do the work of stripping the insulation manually.
Different scrap recycling companies will sometimes have slightly different rules when it comes to how they grade types of metals they accept.
It is a good idea to contact the recycling locations you plan to use and verify their standards for different grades of scrap metal they accept.
These different grades will affect the price a recycling company will pay for scrap metal.
Copper is King
When it comes to wire, copper is pretty much the king when it comes to price.
To get the best price for your scrap copper wire you will need to strip the insulation off of it.
Copper wire with the insulation removed is usually called bare bright copper which is the highest grade of copper wire you can sell at a recycling center.
You will also sometimes see it referred to as bright and shiny copper in some cases.
The Bright and Shiny Kind is Best
Whether you see bare bright or bright and shiny, these are the same top grade of copper to recycle.
Either way this is the copper grade that is the most valuable, and for your scrap copper wire to be classified with this grade the insulation must be removed.
If you have even a moderate amount of scrap wire to strip, doing it manually will get old very quickly.
There is a Tool for That
To speed up the process and make it much easier you need a scrap wire stripper.
Many people do not even know there is a tool for stripping scrap wire.
Sometimes you will find these tools are called automatic wire stripping machines, and we even have an article going over the best automatic wire stripping machines available today (in our opinion anyway).
A scrap wire stripper is a device that is specially designed to strip insulation from wire.
Once you have used a scrap wire stripper it will be almost impossible to even imagine stripping wire manually again.
One of the nice things about scrap wire strippers is they come in many different types and price ranges.
Whether you need to strip a few hundred feet of wire or miles of the stuff there is a scrap wire stripper to meet your needs.
How They Work
All of these wire stripper operate using the same basic concept.
At the most basic level scrap wire strippers are composed of a wire guide, roller, and a blade.
Operating one of these devices is pretty simple.
You insert the wire you want to strip the insulation from into the machine, and the wire is then fed into the scrap wire stripper by a roller.
Above the roller is a blade, and as the wire passes over the roller it is pressed against the blade.
This blade cuts the insulation and allows you to easily remove the insulation from the wire.
You can Start Small
The simplest (and least expensive) types of scrap wire strippers are the ones that are powered manually by a hand crank.
These types of scrap wire strippers are pretty inexpensive, small, and easy to move around.
If you have a fairly small amount of scrap wire to strip or only occasionally have the need to strip wire then one with a hand crank might be a good choice for you.
The Next Step
If you want to up your scrap wire stripping game there are even models that can be powered by a hand drill to speed up and make scrap wire stripping even easier.
If you do decide to get a scrap wire stripper that can be powered by a hand drill it would be a good idea to consider one that can also be manually powered by you using a hand crank.
It just gives you more options to power the automatic wire stripping machine in case drill power is not available for some reason.
More options to power any kind of power tool is usually better because just as soon as you think you will not run into a situation is about the time you actually do encounter it, Murphy’s Law as they say.
After these small hand and drill powered wire strippers the next level would be scrap wire strippers with electric motors powering them.
There are many types of electric scrap wire strippers with many levels of features and price points.
How Much do you Want to Spend?
Some of these cost as little as a few hundred dollars, and they go up frame there.
Top of the line electric scrap wire strippers can cost thousands of dollars.
The more expensive models will generally have features like automatic adjustment for different wire sizes to make it easier when you have multiple sizes of scrap wire to strip.
You will also find that the more expensive scrap wire strippers will be able to strip wire more quickly than less expensive models.
Larger electric motors are also something you will find on the more expensive models, and these larger electric motors will allow these scrap wire strippers to strip larger diameter wire.
These more expensive models will larger electric motors are heavier, and this does make them much less portable then smaller, less expensive models.
Are They Worth the Cost?
If have have a lot of scrap wire to strip then spending more on a scrap wire stripper may well be worth the price paid in the extra time it saves compared to a less expensive scrap wire stripper.
How much more can you get for stripped copper wire vs copper wire with the insulation removed?
It does depend on the type of copper wire, but in some cases you can get an additional $1.00 or more per pound if you strip the insulation off the wire before selling it to a recycling center.
Do Your Research
If you have a large amount of copper wire it also pays to check around at different recycling centers in your area.
Most of the time different recycling centers will pay pretty much the same price for the materials they accept, but there are times when there will be enough a difference between recycling centers to make it worth taking scrap to a particular location.
To make sure a scrap wire stripper would be something worth the investment in your situation be sure to check the prices of stripped vs non-stripped wire at your location recycling center locations.
Once you have the prices you can then calculate how much more money you can get once the wire is stripped of its insulation.
Things to Keep in Mind
One thing to keep in mind that the insulation has weight, so once you strip the insulation from the wire you plan to sell it will be lighter than with the insulation intact.
You need to make sure you take this into account when you are calculating the extra money you will be able to get for the amount of copper wire you plan to sell.
When talking about most common types of scrap wire you will encounter, the insulation will make up 10 – 25% of the weight of the wire.
This amount of weight loss is significant, so do not ignore it, even though you may be tempted to in many cases.
Another thing to keep in mind is you will need to dispose of any insulation you strip from your copper wire.
There will be different rules depending on where you live as to how and where you can dispose of wire insulation.
You local recycling center may be able to give you advice on disposal of stripper insulation.
Copper is not the Only Game in Town
We have been talking about copper wire, but the same applies to other types of wire as well.
Most of the wire you will likely come across in scrap wire recycling is going to be copper or aluminum.
Those are, by far, the most common metals you will find in electrical wiring.
We have focused on copper scrap wire in this article, but the same goes for scrap wire made of just about any material.
Be sure to get the actual prices from your local recycling locations and do a cost benefit calculation to make sure it is worth the trouble to strip the insulation from you scrap wire.
Once you calculate how much extra you will get from stripping the insulation then you can decide how much to invest in and how to pick the best automatic wire stripping machine for your specific situation.
Final Thoughts
This should give you the information you need to make a decision on whether or not you want to invest in a scrap wire stripper.
But we are sure that once you use an automatic wire stripping machine to strip the insulation from your scrap wire it will definitely be pretty much impossible to go back to manually stripping the insulation from your scrap wire.
