I have a few outdoor extension cords which are no longer usable due to cuts or whatever. Rather than throw them away, I’d like to remove the outer sheath so I can reuse 3 wires which make up the cord. However, it’s surprisingly challenging to remove the outer sheath. I’m guessing it was put on when it was hot and stretchy and then vacuum sealed. When I try to get it off, it’s hard, brittle and tight against the wires. I can only get little pieces off at a time. It will take forever to take the whole sheath off. I’m reluctant to cut of the sheath for fear of cutting the coating of the internal wires. And I’m also cautious about applying heat for fear of melting the wire’s coating. Anyone have any thoughts on how to remove the outer sheath without damaging the internal wires? I know there are actual wire strippers, but I believe those are used to strip all the coating in order to extract the copper. I just want to remove the outer sheath of the extension cord without damaging the internal wires.
IMHO unless you are dead broke, you’ll be better off to go buy new wire at the hardware store. You’ll be “earning” the equivalent of maybe 50 cents per hour of effort trying to reuse that internal wire.
There are cable ripper tools that will readily open “Romex” and similar loosely sheathed cables lengthwise. I’m not aware of any tool that will work effectively for the more typical extension cord construction where the outer layer was probably cast in place as a liquid around the inner wires and perhaps paper sheathing.
Also, that internal wire is stranded. So not appropriate for use in building construction. There are a few applications where stranded wire is appropriate as hookups, but those applications tend to use wire a few inches at a time. So unless you’re making a lot of whatever gizmo, you’re going to go to a lot of trouble to have a couple hundred feet each of 3 kinds of extra wire sitting around your garage / basement for decades.
You could always just cut the broken part of the sheath off and stick new male/female plugs on the resulting cable halves.
I cut the plugs off all sorts of cords to reuse. An extension cord can be cut pretty easily and wire costs a fortune now. 14/3 wire runs close to 50¢ a foot retail, fine stranded wire found in extension cords may cost more. Unless you need the individual conductors don’t strip the insulation off, just add new plugs on the end like @scabpicker suggests. You can slice it open with a knife but you have to be careful not to cut into the individual wire insulation. There are tools to slice open insulation if the outer insulation is smooth and consistent thickness but a little bump and you could still cut through the inner insulation.
What will you be using it for?
There is absolutely nothing in the NEC that requires solid wire for building wiring. Stranded THHN/THWN exists for use in conduit, and most (if not all) aluminum wire is stranded (whether as individual wires or as cable).
That said, individual wires inside cable are rarely marked, so stripping cable rarely produces wires that can legally be re-used anywhere else. Stripping the outer cover off NM-B cable containing solid wires does not result in THHN or THWN wires, for example. It just results in unmarked conductors that should not be allowed by an inspector. But that has nothing to do with stranded vs. solid.
I’d be using the wires for odd projects. Not anything for house wiring. What got me thinking about getting wire from extension cords is seeing how expensive spools of wire are. I was hoping I could easily extract the wire, but it looks like it’ll be too much work for it to be worth it.
I would make a custom sheath-removal tool - an x-acto blade sticking into a circular guide, that will just barely cut through the sheath. Then you can grab one of the wires and pull it to rip the cable open.
I had around 40’ of 8-3 cable that I pulled out from the crawlspace. I removed the sheath from it, and then stripped the insulation off of the individual wires to get bare copper, which I am using to make a “ground network” to allow me to convert all the old two-prong outlets to three-prong ones. At the price of copper these days, it’s worth the hassle.
Like beowulff said, but without a specialty tool…it’s surprisingly easy to use a utility knife to cut the outer sheathing lengthwise without damaging the conductors within. I’ve never nicked the internal wires, instead, the blade tends to fall between the conductors. Just don’t use a lot of force, in case it didn’t.
I would cut the cord on half, without trying to remove the outer cover, and use each half as a wire, just stripping the end as needed.
I think making a cut down the jacket of a cable is called slitting.
not quite the same, but related:
for any non-working electric appliance that I (have to) throw out, I snip off the cable/plug section, leaving it as long as possible and reuse those for other projects … more often than not just hooking up a light-socket or so …
surprisingly helpful and normally “better looking” than cable and a generic screw-on-plug …
just make sure you mix and match the cable-diameters with your new project …
so in your particular case, I’d just clip of the part of the extension cable that was compromised and solder them up again (and heatshrink wrap, both individually and collectively) or put male/female plugs on as well hand have two 10m ext.cab instead of one 20m … but no need to throw something away that is 99% in good working order.