What's the best way to do this without nicking the wire. None of the wire strippers I've seen locally can do this.

 

The local home center usually carries narrow gauge wire strippers. If not, any real hardware store or electrical supply should have them.

 

mskreis,

No. 6 wire is sort of in-between. I know of only one pliers-type stripper that'll handle wire that big, and they're made by Ideal. And they only go up to #6 solid.

Usually the bigger stranded conductors don't strip well with pliers-type tools, because the insulation fills the space between the outer individual strands of the wire (which are each about equal to #18).

And there are strippers with swivel blades for real big stuff (#2 and up). They allow yo uto make a ring cut and then a lengthwise cut (actually two or three longitudinal works better). Then you peel the segment of insulation off. Very neat.

The best way to strip #6 is to use a very sharp knife. Skin the insulation off the same way you'd sharpen a pencil--shave the insulation off, cutting at a shallow angle, so as to not nick the copper. Whittle around the wire. The shoulder will look kind of funky, but do not make a ring cut to neaten it up--more than likely, you'll nick the conductor, and that is very bad. Very, very bad--from both an electrical and a mechanical perspective.

And bungalow jeff, you have it backwards. #6 is not narrow gage. Not by a long shot.

Cliff

 

amp-man, thanks for the reply.

 

Oops, How's embarraskin, to quote Popeye. For some reason my head was filling in a '1' and I was thinking 16 ga.