Phone cable sheathing lead...Methods to remove the copper pairs inside?

[lightman]

Using an ax and a block of wood is probably the cleanest method for cutting it to length.

And yeah, getting free lead is an addiction! It won't spoil or go bad, so if you have a place to store it I say get it.

[Lloyd Smale]

when I was a lineman we pulled out about 200 yards of 3 phase cable from the old paper mill. Each phase was 3 conducture 4/0 copper in a grease and paper wrap surround by a lead sheath that was about 3 in diameter. It was such a mess to deal with nobody wanted it but me and one of the sub station electricans that casted too. We found if we put a sling choked around both ends. Anchored one to a truck hooked the other to another truck and pulled them fairly tight and a hooked linemans knife (similar to a carpet knife) with a litte efford could be run down the whole length of it and then it just peeled open. The wire inside was such a mess with all the grease that the other guy didn't even want to deal with it. he just wanted his half of the lead. So I hauled it all home in pickup loads and put it in my burning pit and lit in on fire and all the grease and paper and plastic burned and all that was left was nice 4/0 copper. I ended up getting a bit over 2 grand for that copper and it was probably actually worth twice that. When the other guy found out he told me he wanted his share. I laughed! but it will cut with a knife or just stretch in across two vehicles and run a skill saw down the middle.

[Geezer in NH]

Varnished Cambric was the insulation in a lot of lead covered underground feeder cables.

[Mike W1]

Just got a piece of probably 300 pair cable around 20 feet long so grabbed my little Chinese air tool. Used a little V shaped chisel and walked right along it nicely. Bent the edges back slightly with a smaller channel lock plier and now my brother has a nice batch of copper and I'm happy with 39+ pounds of good lead. Worked better than I thought it would without any special chisel too.

BTW it makes life simpler if you run the chisel at an angle both for the fact you don't screw up the copper and the fact you're not any worse off that way to grab the edge to roll things open. Tried both ways.

[remy3424]

Well, I am getting this cable dealt with. Friday morning I took the fine copper phone wire with the paper insulation to the salvage yard, they did take it, over $500 worth. It paid for the repair of a guy's tool that craped-out while I was using it and gave half to my buddy that hooked me up with phone cable. Started melting into ingots yesterday, have 624 one pound Lyman ingots so far, must be at least a hundred pounds left, will finish that off today. Looks like I will have a few pounds for sale/trade some!

Edit, finished it off, 880 ingots. Plus I have a couple splices, I will put those in with my range reclaim. It was pretty clean, just some lube on the outside, it was in a conduit.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

Good on you! I bought 300 pounds of that sheathing a couple years back. There is tons of that buried all over the country.

[lightman]

Well, I am getting this cable dealt with. Friday morning I took the fine copper phone wire with the paper insulation to the salvage yard, they did take it, over $500 worth. It paid for the repair of a guy's tool that craped-out while I was using it and gave half to my buddy that hooked me up with phone cable. Started melting into ingots yesterday, have 624 one pound Lyman ingots so far, must be at least a hundred pounds left, will finish that off today. Looks like I will have a few pounds for sale/trade some!

All of those ingots make the work worth while. Several years ago I bought an air chisel just for cable sheathing and splice covers.

[lightman]

Good on you! I bought 300 pounds of that sheathing a couple years back. There is tons of that buried all over the country.

Most of mine was overhead cable. It was cleaner to work with than some of the buried stuff that I have gotten. I took whatever was offered!