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It pays to save electronics scrap.

It pays to save electronics scrap. I needed a short piece of thin but not too thin single strand wire and I don't seem to have any except for a collection of 8 wires soldered into an octal plug from a 1930's (or

40's or 50's?) radio. (the kind of plug that uses a tube socket)

IIRC, I got this 40 years ago and I think I got it from someone else's scrap, so it's easily 60 years old. The red, blue, and brown wires are quite pretty but the yellow? wires seem very dirty. I wonder why.

It's actually not single strand but the entire length of the multi-strand is tinned.

Does that mean they used solder on 100's of thousands of miles of wire when only a teeny tiny bit ever appeared out of the insulation? Isn't that a big waste of tin and lead? Do they still do that?

Another interesting factoid: I needed to use for the first time some liquid rosin flux (in a little bottle from MG Chemicals). I've had it for 10 years unopened and it has one of those obnoxious caps that you have to press down before turning. No matter how hard I pressed down, it eventually ratcheted over what it was supposed to catch on. I tried over and over, last night. This morning it opened on the second try! The room temperature is about the same.

Reply to
micky
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Tinned anyway, yep, at times. I have some rubber jacketed extension cords my dad used for an early electric lawn mower that were done like that.

Its very thin on the copper strand itself.

Havent noticed any.

There is a real knack with some of those things.

Reply to
Rod Speed

Yes, it is one of the ways that "marine grade" wire is made more expensive! The idea is that at sea you cannot guarantee that bare copper wire will be protected from corrosion by the insulation.

Reply to
Mike Coon

I've seen this wire- it looked like the standard cloth covered wire in a old TV or radio set, but was completely solderered, not just tinned. Not sure what the reason for this was either.

How does flux go "bad"? I use the liquid type in what looks like a paint marker and it still works fine, way past the "use by" date.

Reply to
Cydrome Leader

some military grade wires are "made more expensive" by being silver plated - although they might look like they are tinned.

Also, the insulation is often of teflon instead of PVC

AT

Reply to
Abandoned_Trolley

Sounds a lot like wire-wrap wire, a lot of them are ETFE or PTFE coated (it most definitely isn't all Kynar), silver plated. The plating is for corrosion resistance (particularly in wire wrapped joints) although there are some theoretical advantages at high frequencies I would generally consider the wire unsuitable at those speeds.

--
Andrew Smallshaw 
andrews@sdf.org
Reply to
Andrew Smallshaw

I was referring to "normal" multi stranded hook up wire - theres a different set of rules for wire wrapping.

In some wrapping systems the insulation is left on the wire, and pierced by the shapened corners of the post - similar to IDC technology. I guess in those cases the trick is to pierce the insulation, but not the plating ?

AT

Reply to
Abandoned_Trolley

The process for curing a teflon (or TefZel, etc.) jacket on those wires does require the silver, for chemical compatibility. Some old wire used cotton under rubber, for similar reasons (so the insulation COULD be removed, not permanently bonded to the wire).

Reply to
whit3rd

Stripping off that 500 wire isn't a bad idea, either.

Reply to
bruce bowser

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