Opening lead telco cables

[Mike W1]

I'd hate to think of how many of them I've salvaged lead and copper out of over the years as I used to splice copper cables. But I tried a new method awhile back and thought I'd pass it along as well as a couple other things to make things easier.

The smaller ones are, IMHO, opened the easiest by cutting them into 4-5 foot lengths. Then go to the middle of the piece and "ring" the cable with a knife. A couple of bends back and forth will make a clean break in the sheath and you can slide the lead sections off. Take the copper and tie a knot in it and you've got a small batch that you can sell to the scrap dealer too. This would work pretty well for up to about 100 pair cable. MAYBE, slightly larger too.

When you get much bigger than that the lead isn't going to slide off as easily. We used to use an angled "chipping" knife to open the bigger ones along with a small hammer. Trick is to angle the knife and slice through the sheath which isn't really that hard to control without getting into the copper pairs which we needed for splicing and now want to save for the scrap dealer. Took a lot of taps to do a piece of cable.

Enter the handy little air chisel. I probably cut the sections about 5-6 feet long for this operation. A side benefit is the air chisel not only eliminates all that hammering by hand but when doing it by hand one had better luck anchoring one end of the cable so it didn't slide around. The air chisel eliminates that part of the task. A water pump plier makes it easy to bend the lead edges back so the copper pairs can be extracted.

Todays score included a large splice sleeve which that chisel walked right through with no effort and even used it to cut the thing into small pieces for the pot. Wish I'd have tried that air chisel years ago. ALMOST, makes it fun!

[samari46]

Have what looks like a small meat cleaver with a very thick back or spine and has a short heavily insulated handle. Splicer crews used to clean out their trucks occasionally and basically throw anything not used over a couple weeks time. Many partial melted bars of solder, lead jackets from splices and of course the cleaver. Frank

[mattw]

I have used a sheath knife, it looks very similar to a gut hook blade. Worked well.

[lightman]

I use an air chisel myself.

[Mike W1]

Have what looks like a small meat cleaver with a very thick back or spine and has a short heavily insulated handle. Splicer crews used to clean out their trucks occasionally and basically throw anything not used over a couple weeks time. Many partial melted bars of solder, lead jackets from splices and of course the cleaver. Frank

Chipping knife like this?

[Conditor22]

I clamp it to a board and use a small sledge and a chisel

[samari46]

Mike, nope. Actually has a meat cleaver shape best I could describe it. Back or spine is straight from front to back.And very thick and meant to be struck with a hammer. Used when I got it and kinda sway backed from being hit with a hammer and weighs almost 2 pounds. Got 500 pounds of roofing lead from the junk yard and used it to more or less reduce the size so's I could use my dutch oven to melt it down into ingots. Frank

[colchester]

Power knife here is an example
https://www.gordonelectricsupply.com...RoCL_wQAvD_BwE

[Mike W1]

Power knife here is an example
https://www.gordonelectricsupply.com...RoCL_wQAvD_BwE

That's a sheath knife, usually carried on the belt in a pouch with the splicers scissors (snips). I don't get the "power" and they're only 6+ inches long. A 2 lb. hammer would be overkill.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

I got 300 pounds of that sheathing from my scrap yard a while back. Nice stuff.

[remy3424]

I processed about 900 pounds of phone cable sheathing (bigger stuff, 2 & 2.5") earlier this year with a pneumatic air hammer (panel cutter bit). It worked better than anything else, particularly when the pieces were kninked or had bends. Not even close to "fun" with that quanity. My pencils tell me that the hardness is 9, I kept any splices seperate and those ingots also tested 9, I was expecting those to be harder with the soldered joints. The ribbon in the wire showed it was manufactured in the 50s.

[colchester]

That's a sheath knife, usually carried on the belt in a pouch with the splicers scissors (snips). I don't get the "power" and they're only 6+ inches long. A 2 lb. hammer would be overkill.

My dad was a cable splicer, the knife that I linked is what he and other splicers referred to as a "power knife". He used that knife to open the lead sheaths on the cable splices. Not sure why they called it that but that was the tool that he used to open the lead sheaths

[15meter]

I use an air chisel myself.

I do the same thing:

Works well,

straighter the better when starting, I've done two cuts 180 degrees apart, seems to work the best.

[Mike W1]

My dad was a cable splicer, the knife that I linked is what he and other splicers referred to as a "power knife". He used that knife to open the lead sheaths on the cable splices. Not sure why they called it that but that was the tool that he used to open the lead sheaths

Too windy to "play" outside so I'll beat the dead horse a bit more. Realize different parts of the country may do things a bit different than we did but I've probably worked around 35-50 different splicers. We used the "sheath knife" to open up PIC cables all the time. The only time I ever saw them used on lead sheath were very small cables as you still had to tap-tap-tap them with a small hammer. Hand pulling them on lead to score the sheath would have been a pain as you had to cut that opening at a slant. Larger cables the chipping knife was much more efficient. Never saw anyone use a sheath knife on any sized splice sleeve, even the really little ones.

Sheath knives worked fine on PIC cables as all you had to really do was score the steel sheath under the plastic a bit and pop it open. Ring the outer cover with the sheath knife and you could peel everything right off. That wouldn't work with lead though.

If you get a chance ask your Dad or one of his buddies and update me if you would. Thanks.

[bowfin]

I am not sure I am dealing with the same type of cables, but I got plenty of two, three and four conductor lead sheathed cable from our electric company. I separate out the first foot, then tie two of the conductors together around the clothesline pole. I then grab the third one and pull on it hard enough to split the cable.

Since the conductors are twisted, I have to stop and pass the "pulling wire" around the other two every two or three feet. Otherwise, I am trying to pull through them and not just the lead sheathing. I can do 20 feet in a couple of minutes.

I will try to do the video.

[Lloyd Smale]

what we used to do with power cables incased in lead is wrap a sling around about a 20 foot section on both ends and hook each end up to a trailer hitch on a truck and ease forward until there up in the air. then take a hooked knife we called them skinnng knives for wire but there the same thing as a carpet knife. You can pretty much cut the hole peice end to end and open it up. Guy today with all the cordless tools could probably do the same with a battery skill saw set to cut shallow. These were fairly big cables. Inside was three 954mcm copper conductor in them. This was an old cable out of our substation that powered a paper mill across the street that was upgrading. Comical thing was i did it with one of the substation techs from a neighboring town All he was interested in was the lead. He told me to help him and i could have the copper. It was a messy job. whole pipe is injected with a grease. We spent a whole weekend doing it. Dont know how much lead he got but it was a pile. took two pickup runs to haul it. Me I sold the copper for 4200 bucks. He about crapped when i walked up and handed him a grand. Told him i felt guilty taking advantage of him. Couple years later he died in a car wreck. His wife called me and asked me if i wanted all his lead. Took me 4 loads in my pickup to haul it all home. One pickup load that was mostly type metal. She said she didnt want anything for it. She had a son in CA so i had the wife buy her a round trip ticket to CA so she could visit him. type metal is long gone as is most of the ww i got from that haul but i still have probably a 1000 lbs of that lead sheath.

[colchester]

Too windy to "play" outside so I'll beat the dead horse a bit more. Realize different parts of the country may do things a bit different than we did but I've probably worked around 35-50 different splicers. We used the "sheath knife" to open up PIC cables all the time. The only time I ever saw them used on lead sheath were very small cables as you still had to tap-tap-tap them with a small hammer. Hand pulling them on lead to score the sheath would have been a pain as you had to cut that opening at a slant. Larger cables the chipping knife was much more efficient. Never saw anyone use a sheath knife on any sized splice sleeve, even the really little ones.

Sheath knives worked fine on PIC cables as all you had to really do was score the steel sheath under the plastic a bit and pop it open. Ring the outer cover with the sheath knife and you could peel everything right off. That wouldn't work with lead though.

If you get a chance ask your Dad or one of his buddies and update me if you would. Thanks.

Mike I had a chance to discuss this with my dad and you are in fact correct. We did use what he called a power knife around the house to split the sheaths. He did confirm however on the job that was not the tool of choice in most cases and that a chipping knife was used in most cases to do the heavy lifting. The "power knife" probably a local term for it was used only for cleanup and more delicate work. My apologies for the bad information

[Mike W1]

Mike I had a chance to discuss this with my dad and you are in fact correct. We did use what he called a power knife around the house to split the sheaths. He did confirm however on the job that was not the tool of choice in most cases and that a chipping knife was used in most cases to do the heavy lifting. The "power knife" probably a local term for it was used only for cleanup and more delicate work. My apologies for the bad information

Was pretty sure about it and appreciate your reply.

[imashooter2]

Memories... Pop worked the line gang for Ma Bell back in the 60s. Everyone knew he cast and every time we came home there was another pile in the driveway. It got to the point he had to ask them to stop. When he built his addition on in the 80s, I took about 600 pounds of it from under the porch and the construction guys carried the rest to a dumpster. 2 tons, maybe more. Now I know what you’re all thinking, but the 80s were a different time. You could walk into any gas station in town and they’d be happy to have Bob carry that bucket of scrap out to your car, and frankly COWW were better raw material for me than the sheath. I never gave a thought to a big stockpile. Lead was everywhere free for the asking.

Still have about 300 pounds of that sheath. Used some to cast .38 wadcutters last week.

[tlf65]

I was a telephone central office equipment installer for the Western Electric company. The power knife was so named because it was used to cut the cloth/rubber insulation off of the power cables used in the DC power plants in telephone central offices. The short blade was to prevent shorting when working on live equipment.