You can find wire strippers that fit your needs online or at your nearby home improvement or electrical store.
If you don’t know the gauge, or if your tool isn’t labelled, place the wire in each notch to find a match. The wire should fit snugly into the notch.
If you’re using the wire for an electrical project, you’ll only want to strip the insulation off of the tip. If you’re stripping wire for scrap, it’s more efficient to just slice down the length of the wire with a utility blade instead of pulling off a little bit at a time with wire stripping pliers.
If you’re using the notch with the right gauge, you should be able to cut through the insulation without doing any damage.
You don’t want to press hard with the knife, or you could slice through the insulation and nick the metal conductors. It might take some practice before you can apply the correct amount of pressure, so consider trying the technique on scrap wires first.
Carefully scoring and bending the wire are useful if you want to reuse the wire in an electrical project. If you’re scrapping it, it’s easier to slice the wire lengthwise with a razor or use a wire stripping machine.
Since you’re just selling the wire for scrap, you don’t need to be as careful about nicking the metal conductor under the insulation. Use a flat-edged blade instead of a serrated knife. The teeth of a serrated blade would just make a mess instead of slicing cleanly through the insulation.
Automatic machines can strip at least 200 feet (about 60 meters) per minute, but they cost several hundred dollars. Buying one will only be worth it if you regularly scrap wire in bulk.
If sandpaper isn’t available, you can also use two nail file emery boards. [15] X Research source
If you only have emery boards, just place one board on top of the wire’s tip and one under it.
Use the same pulling technique if you’re using emery boards. Repeat the process until you’ve stripped the desired length of coating off of the wire.
