You know - like when the reel has just dropped! :(

[graham-xrf]

.. and broken .. and you now have a tangle!

It does not matter what kind of reel, cotton, fishing line, guy rope, they all mangle up in a similar way.
In my case, a new full reel of 1mm2 insulated copper wire, a gift of industrial surplus that does have future use for me.
The reel is (approx in inches) about 10" diameter, with middle metal section 4" diameter, and 4" between the side cheeks.

It drops, and POW - one of the cardboard side cheeks comes away from the rolled tin metal middle. Hundreds of loops of wire go spilling across the garage, forming special sorts of tangle knots as the larger outer loops leave the smaller loops behind. That size reel is bigger and heavier than the usual 100m. I just don't know how much was on there. Oh dash and darn it! (+ further expressions of a more robust nature)!

Given the mess, and the time and effort to get it back, it might have been better to just put the whole lot in the trash, but I was unable to summon up enough environmental indifference! I scooped what loops were still a bit together onto a piece of broomstick, and stood it across a pair of axle stands at max height. Then, using a similar reel donated from another reel that was about empty, I found an end, and started undoing the Father and Mother of a tangle. Passing the (getting heavy) reel under and over the broomstick, and between spools of wire on the floor is becoming an upper body workout! I see it there. It offends the eye. At the times I can, I recover some more onto the "new" reel. Oh yes - it has to go on the new reel "kinda tidy", though not altogether perfect at the sides.

Is the need to get all that wire back onto a reel some kind of "waste not, want not" OCD that does not yet have a name, and I am the only one who has it?

 

[pdentrem]

We had that happen with a spool of 0.004” EDM wire. Just tossed it into the recycle bin.
Pierre

 

[markba633csi]

Been there, done that. Unfortunately haven't made much use of the wire I rescued, but couldn't bear to toss it at the time
-M

 

[savarin]

Got sick of the tangle my 5Kg spool of .6 mig wire made when I dropped it that I just cut it off at the spool then started winding the tangle as tight onto it self as I could then dumped it.
The little I managed to re wind went rusty later so that also had to be dumped.
Made me realise that the second impulse to dump it was the correct one.

 

[RJSakowski]

I inherited a 1/4 mile spool of 5/16" steel cable used by a cable TV company for stringing their cable. They had apparently dropped the spool and broke the cheek on one side with cable spilling off. They tossed it rather than try to straighten the mess out. With care, I was able to respool the cable and salvage it. It came in handy for many projects over the years.

I had long ago come to the conclusion that wire, rope, fishing line, and cable wee actually sentient beings with a perverse sense of humor. Some of the knots that they tied were actually quite beautiful in their intricacy. Disentangling or untieing requires a large amount of patience, sometimes more than I am willing to deploy. I rest assured in the knowledge that what was done can be undone. As long as you don't start threading ends through the loops, that is. Oh, and I forgot to add Christmas lights to the list.

I have several packs of spring steel wire, the cardboard containers for which have long since disintegrated. The heavier gauges have transformed into three dimensional balls. The .007" is better behaved but a 1" lb. spool of .007" wire has an awful lot of coils. I can't ever find the ends of the coil so I usually just make a random cut and unthread what I need. so far, I haven't ended up with a short length resulting from a previous cut.

One last one that any farmers can relate to is baler twine. It comes in a 20,000 ft. spool. I use the term spool loosely as there is no central spindle. In use, it dispenses from the center, usually without incident but should it be dropped or some critter decide to winter over in it, you can end up with a 20,000 ft. mess. At least the newer polypropylene is less prone to tangling. The older sisal twine would swell up with humidity and the inner windings would mushroom out rendering the whole spool useless..

 

[graham-xrf]

I inherited a 1/4 mile spool of 5/16" steel cable used by a cable TV company for stringing their cable. They had apparently dropped the spool and broke the cheek on one side with cable spilling off. They tossed it rather than try to straighten the mess out. With care, I was able to respool the cable and salvage it. It came in handy for many projects over the years.

I had long ago come to the conclusion that wire, rope, fishing line, and cable wee actually sentient beings with a perverse sense of humor. Some of the knots that they tied were actually quite beautiful in their intricacy. Disentangling or untieing requires a large amount of patience, sometimes more than I am willing to deploy. I rest assured in the knowledge that what was done can be undone. As long as you don't start threading ends through the loops, that is. Oh, and I forgot to add Christmas lights to the list.

I have several packs of spring steel wire, the cardboard containers for which have long since disintegrated. The heavier gauges have transformed into three dimensional balls. The .007" is better behaved but a 1" lb. spool of .007" wire has an awful lot of coils. I can't ever find the ends of the coil so I usually just make a random cut and unthread what I need. so far, I haven't ended up with a short length resulting from a previous cut.

One last one that any farmers can relate to is baler twine. It comes in a 20,000 ft. spool. I use the term spool loosely as there is no central spindle. In use, it dispenses from the center, usually without incident but should it be dropped or some critter decide to winter over in it, you can end up with a 20,000 ft. mess. At least the newer polypropylene is less prone to tangling. The older sisal twine would swell up with humidity and the inner windings would mushroom out rendering the whole spool useless..

I can relate to all you have said, and you have had the satisfaction of using those material resources.

Baler twine dispenses best out of the twine dispenser on the baler, but if you just have the reel, and take it out of the centre, there comes a point where it can't support what is left of the sides, and it falls over as you pull, and .. tangle! I live backed onto a farm. I get to keep what I can untangle, when I need any.

Taking paper roll wipe out of the centre is also prone to the "collapse" point. I deliberately take from the outer. In my case, the insulated wire is a dual problem of tangle + wrecked reel. Even if there had been zero tangle, the problem of how to get that amount of unsupported wire back onto another reel is not easy.

The thing is, I have gone past the half-way point toward recovery. A long time ago, my Dad told me that if one gets that far, even on something that that turns out to be very slow going, you have to press on to finish. The "give up" point may not be in the second half, because you have already proven you can win. Hmm.. sometimes I have my doubts about that!

 

[brino]

Graham,

I recently got a box of MIG wire spools that I had ordered and found nothing but the raw spools banging around in the box....no padding, no paper, no bubble wrap. It was four or five 2-lb rolls of wire. Three spools were obviously broken.





The other spools were also broken when examined closely.

Luckily in this case I was able to send back and get refunded........for the pain of packing them up properly (so I couldn't be blamed) and dropping them at the shipping depot.

A hundred dollars worth of new welding wire.
What a waste!

-brino

 

[cathead]

I have a 50 pound roll of stainless steel wire about 25 to 30 thousandths thick. I would have to think it is for MIG welding.
There is nothing wrong with the spool and it is a full reel of the stuff. I would guess several miles at least...
Maybe I will use some of it for an electric fence if nothing else.

 

[tq60]

Good for lots things.

Wind chimes, hanging things in the yard

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

 

[graham-xrf]

I have a 50 pound roll of stainless steel wire about 25 to 30 thousandths thick. I would have to think it is for MIG welding.
There is nothing wrong with the spool and it is a full reel of the stuff. I would guess several miles at least...
Maybe I will use some of it for an electric fence if nothing else.

SS lock wire is useful. You have to pay for such stuff if you have anything to do with aircraft work.
But..
If for MIG, it is a tad on the thin side. The usual is 0.8mm. Your 0.030" is 0.762mm.
You do get 0.6mm standard size SS MIG wire, which is 0.023", so you could be right about it.

In all of these, the weight of the reel contents threatens the strength of the reel itself. In my ill considered "recovery", the salvaged amount is now around 75%, and the cardboard sides of the reel are not taking it well. Maybe I will attempt a picture.