hey guys Adam from tested here in my cave with spotlight on a specific tool
but in order to get to the tool I'm gonna have to tell a little story this
is a piece of electronic kit that I've got lying around this is a retractable
power cord from an old vacuum cleaner it's got a commutator ring in here and I
buy these occasionally because I use them in builds sometimes and they're
very useful and like you'd imagine coming out of the back are two wires and
if I want to connect these two wires into an electronic circuit I need to
strip them okay so what we're talking about today is stripping wires and
everybody's first wire stripper looks like some version of this sharpened
blades with holes of specific sizes that match the gauges of the wires you're
attempting to strip and you choose the gauge I think this is about an 18 or 16
gauge will start with 16 you bring the stripper over it and you pull on it and
it pulls the vinyl covering off the wire leaving the wire exposed so you can
solder it lug it attach it into your circuit but there are issues with these
strippers as excellent as they are and you should always have one of these in
your kit when your wire is let's say way down at the quick it's really hard to
get these in there number one number two in order to strip you have to be pulling
on one side of the wire and also pulling on the other I cannot tell you how many
times I've been like in a ceiling trying to free up a wire and bringing up this
and I end up like yanking it out of the ceiling because I'm trying to get
leverage on this thing in an impossible position and that's where these just
aren't awesome when you need leverage and you're in strange positions or
working upside down these can be your worst enemy about 25 years ago somebody
showed me these these are automatic wire strippers and I'll show you how they
work hold on just gonna grab some basic wire
here so they have a cutter down here so you can cut your wire this size yeah
and then they've got a stripper up here which grabs the wire with the front jaws
here and then uses these two blades here to pull that vinyl off and the thing to
take away from this that's so amazing I'll do it again for you is that I don't
have to hold on to the other side of this wire it pulls that off all by
itself this is such a freakin game-changer the problem was these were
expensive when I was first buying them I had to save up
I think the first pair I bought was over a hundred bucks Greenlee came out with
one in the early aughts that was a lot cheaper and I'm here to tell you that on
Amazon right now you can buy these for about 15 bucks they are not as amazing
as the expensive pair but they do most of the same work they strip a wire in
the same way you go they strip this gauge of wire just fine I'll try some
here's a old lamp cord a grounded lamp cord I had lying around this is very
likely one of the most common things that you would be stripping and this
strips that stuff all day long this little red tab here that allows you to
streamline and adjust the amount of vinyl that you're taking off and for
like big jobs where you're stripping a whole bunch of stuff and attaching a
whole bunch of stuff that's awesome it will also do very light gauge wire I've
got some what is this 22 gauge here nice and thin here we go yep and so I found
its limit this is some 26 gauge wire here very thin and when you do this it
actually cuts right through that thin wire and that is what happens with the
cheaper versions of this but holy hell for 15 bucks this absolutely deserves to
be added to your kit because this one that I have this is the one I bought 25
years ago and it's still working for me so if you find this as useful as I did
save up your pennies and get yourself an excellent one