Calculator
Strip or Sell As-Is?
The Wire Yield calculator compares raw dollars. This one subtracts what your time actually costs — the number that decides if stripping is worth doing.
Your cable & time
Typical range 85–94%. Thick utility/feeder cable. Highest recovery of any common cable — almost always worth stripping.
By hand, knife-stripping romex runs 8–15 lb/hr for most people. A bench stripper can do 80–150+ lb/hr.
What you'd earn doing something else with that hour — or minimum wage as a floor.
Indicative default — enter your yard's price. Saved for next time.
Indicative default — enter your yard's price. Saved for next time.
Why the raw price difference isn't the real answer
Stripping a cable almost always pays more per pound than selling it insulated — that gap is real, and the Wire Yield calculator shows it plainly. But that gap has to pay for an hour of your life, and an hour spent hunched over a utility knife is an hour not spent doing something else. This calculator prices that hour in and asks the only question that matters: after your time is counted, are you actually ahead?
Finding your real strip rate
Skip the internet folklore — strip rate depends on cable type, gauge, tool, and how practiced you are, and it varies by a wide margin between a first attempt with a utility knife and a well-worn routine with a bench stripper. Vendors selling stripping machines publish big multipliers (some claim 10x or more over hand stripping), which may be true for their tool on their test cable, but is not a number to plan your afternoon around. Time yourself on 5–10 lb of the cable you actually have — that number is worth more than any published average.
Reading the result
Strip premium is the same raw gap as the Wire Yield calculator — what stripping earns before labor. Cost of your time is hours required × your hourly rate. Net advantage is what's left after that cost — the true answer. Effective pay from stripping reframes the whole job as an hourly wage: if it's below what you'd earn elsewhere, your hour is worth more doing something else, even though stripping technically "pays."
The fastest way to turn a negative into a positive isn't skipping labor costs — it's raising your strip rate. Every doubling of pounds-per-hour halves your labor cost for the same premium. That's the entire economic case for a bench or machine stripper, and why the payback question is really "how many pounds until the machine pays for the hours it saves me," not "how many pounds until it pays for itself in dollars."
Strip-or-sell questions
What's different from the Wire Yield calculator?
Wire Yield compares raw dollar values: copper recovered × price, versus cable weight × as-is price. This calculator takes that same premium and subtracts what your time actually costs — the number that decides whether stripping is worth doing at all.
How do I find my own strip rate?
Time yourself stripping a known weight — even 5 lb is enough for a rough rate. Hand speed varies enormously by cable type, tool, and experience; a rate you've actually measured beats any number on the internet, vendor claims included.
What hourly rate should I use?
Whatever your next-best hour is worth: your day job's wage, a side-gig rate, or just minimum wage as a floor. If you'd otherwise be watching TV, some scrappers value their time at $0 — that's a legitimate answer, but it hides the opportunity cost of hours you could spend sourcing more scrap instead.
The result says stripping loses money — should I never strip?
It means hand-stripping this specific lot, at your rate and prices, doesn't clear your hourly bar. A faster method (a bench or machine stripper) raises your effective $/hr directly — that's the whole case for buying one. See the gear guide for stripper payback math.
Is a machine stripper worth it for you?
A faster strip rate raises your effective hourly pay directly — see tested options against the payback math.