From Wiki:
Solid wire, also called solid-core or single-strand wire, consists of one piece of metal wire. Stranded wire is composed of smaller gauge wire bundled or wrapped together to form a larger conductor.
Stranded wire is more flexible than solid wire of the same total cross-sectional area. Solid wire is cheaper to manufacture than stranded wire and is used where there is little need for flexibility in the wire. Solid wire also provides mechanical ruggedness; and, because it has relatively less surface area which is exposed to attack by corrosives, protection against the environment. Stranded wire is used when higher resistance to
metal fatigue is required. Such situations include connections between
circuit boards in multi-printed-circuit-board devices, where the rigidity of solid wire would produce too much stress as a result of movement during assembly or servicing;
A.C. line cords for appliances; musical instrument cables; computer mouse cables; welding electrode cables; control cables connecting moving machine parts; mining machine cables; trailing machine cables; and numerous others.
At high frequencies, current travels near the surface of the wire because of the
skin effect, resulting in increased power loss in the wire. Stranded wire might seem to reduce this effect, since the total surface area of the strands is greater than the surface area of the equivalent solid wire, but ordinary stranded wire does not reduce the skin effect because all the strands are short-circuited together and behave as a single conductor. A stranded wire will have higher resistance than a solid wire of the same diameter because the cross-section of the stranded wire is not all copper; there are unavoidable gaps between the strands (this is the
circle packing problem for
circles within a circle). A stranded wire with the same cross-section of conductor as a solid wire is said to have the same
equivalent gauge and is always a larger diameter.
However, for many high-frequency applications,
proximity effect is more severe than skin effect, and in some limited cases, simple stranded wire can reduce proximity effect. For better performance at high frequencies,
litz wire, which has the individual strands insulated and twisted in special patterns, may be used.
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My personal choice is normally stranded for anything that moves. I also don't like the risk of nicking a solid during any stripping that needs to be done, especially on small gauge wire. And no, I don't use a hot stripper. How much of that wire do you need? I may have some. I have quite a collection of various cables with multi-conductors that I get from removal of electronics at a local hospital. Not spools upon spools, but sometimes quite a few feet. Also, you can go to a heavier gauge wire with only the physical size as a drawback, along with the loss of some flexibility.
