Skinning primary?

[Stanman, at ComEdy Il.]

Just wondering if there is a good way of skinning primary that has the insulation without paper? I'm not talking about poly wire. Just some shitty insulation on the wire without paper underneath. Knife, torch, knife, torch, channel locks, the idiot that designed this shit ought ta be shot! You know the shit I'm talking about, insulation melted(it seems that way) into the wire, polyskinner doesn't work. This could go into tricks of the trade!

So, how bout it fellas? ;)

[Bulldogge]

Once you get the old outside heavy stuff off try hitting it with a wire brush and torch.

[Hemingray Insulators]

I used to have this on my backyard line, before I upgraded to #4acsr bare conductor. it was the type without the paper underneath, I twisted the insulation of with chanel-locks, and then wirebrushed it real good, time consuming but it worked pretty good. I tried it with a knife at first, but it the crap made the blade all sticky and back, took a while to get the mess cleaned off of it. Id be woried about using a torch that it would just make a bigger, stickier mess, but thats just me.

[rick]

We use a catfish skinner type thing. We score the inner semicon,and we grab it with the skinnners at the top. We usually don't worry to much about the very end of the insulation,cuz we strip it.

[Stanman, at ComEdy Il.]

I'm talking about overhead aluminum wire(mainly 266) with this shitty insulation. Not copper Hemi. And not underground primary, sorry i didn't explain a little better. Let's try again.

[Stanman, at ComEdy Il.]

Is the insulation a plastic or some sort of a fiber type?
Plastic/rubber. Same stuff that is manafactured today with paper underneath, no 266 anymore, but 4/0. Thank god we only string in bare conductor now.

[micoolb]

We use treeguard wire for our primary. here in the moutains and you have to strip off the insulation when you want to hang a basket. The best thing that works for me is a box knife and channel locks. just score the circumfrence of the insulation on each side that you need skinned and then score a lin. to each down th middle then twist off with channeys

[Hemingray Insulators]

I'm talking about overhead aluminum wire(mainly 266) with this shitty insulation. Not copper Hemi. And not underground primary, sorry i didn't explain a little better. Let's try again.

my center phase Was Al, not copper and it was #4 acsr, but the insulation on it looked like crap, so when I got #4 bare ascr, I strun that up.
I'm not sure where you got underground primary from :confused: are you talking about Ricks reply there?

Your talking about the cotton/tar like insulation, right?

[CenterPointEX]

Just wondering if there is a good way of skinning primary that has the insulation without paper? I'm not talking about poly wire. Just some shitty insulation on the wire without paper underneath. Knife, torch, knife, torch, channel locks, the idiot that designed this shit ought ta be shot! You know the shit I'm talking about, insulation melted(it seems that way) into the wire, polyskinner doesn't work. This could go into tricks of the trade!

So, how bout it fellas? ;)There is really no good method. Scraping it with the back of you knife helps some but you will never really get an uncompromised connection... The only real fix is repalcing the wire or splicing in a new piece if you can get back past the melt. LIke you said, the plastic melts into the wire... nothing you can do to get it out.

[dirtdobber]

with C.P. shit is a pain in the arse really sux. I have worked with it on a few occasions. found that if you put cable cleaner on it costently sort of helps.dont know if its just cleaner or if it actually loosens up the melt between the 2.