wire, types. characteristics, wire lace, coatings

Thanks for the interesting information. I think I'll stick with a sharp knife or a match or a cigarette lighter when I have to strip DCC wire. The big advantage of burning the insulation off, of course, is that you avoid nicking or cutting off strands. A small piece of sandpaper or emery cloth will easily remove any small amount of soot that might remain at the point of stripping.

If the cloth is woven then you could push it together, kinda like Chinese handcuffs. use a pair of jewelers dikes to snip the cloth around the wire and if there is no asbestos insulation it should slip right off. I do the same with shielded RF cable.

I have been looking on the web for automatic wire strippers but found none recently. The have a motor and a spinning disk with two cutters that are sized for wire diameter. An example of how they work is best illustrated like this method. Take your hands and put then at chest level with your fingertips touching, palms down. Than have some one take a pencil or boom-stick and push up between your touching fingers till they get though. Now as you remove the pencil back down the hands start to come back together and try to stop the pencil because they have springs the force the fingers (cutter blades) back to touching one another. Now the insulation is softer than the wire and as the cutter blades dig into the insulation they are spinning at the same time and make a clean cut around the wire. The wire itself is not touched while your pulling the wire back out and just the insulation remains because it cannot get back though the cutter blades.

I will see if I can find a picture. I used to use that in a harness manufacturing section in our shop. When you have a about 100-200 wires to trim and tin solder it speeds things up.

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This PDF file explains better than me!
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DCC (double cotton covered) wire shows up frequently in old radios. When it has to be lengthened or otherwise spliced, I know of only two "tools" that will successfully (that is, without frustration or swearing) strip it: (1) a knife with a sharp blade and (2) a match or cigarette lighter.

If anyone knows of a more legitimate tool for stripping DCC wire, I'd like to hear about it.

Wire topics