ECN Electrical Forum
Discussion Forums for Electricians, Inspectors and Related Professionals

So, how many remember "Boxes Of Wire", when TW was commonly installed, and how the Wire would catch on the small pre-sliced Finger Hole Opening during a Pull?

Found this guy hiding in the back of my Father's Garage, and even though I was most likely still in Elementary School, I did many Weekend and Summer Day Pulls with my Father, and these Boxes of TW Wire were very common.

Wanted to share some newly found Nostalgia.


-- Scott

Good find Scott!,
I suppose you could say we've come full circle then, considering that Cat5 and 6 wire comes in a box these days.
Oh and yeah, I reckon they have a guy at the factory whose sole occupation is to ensure that there are at least 5 tangle points in every box.
I have never had a box of that stuff that has not tangled inside.

We had similar looking boxes with 100 meter coils of 1.5 and 2.5 mm² solid wire in The Netherlands when I did my apprenteship in the late 70's.

Pull the wires out from the circle in the middle and draw them into the conduit pipes. Often you had 3 or 4 boxes going at the same time with brown, light blue, yellow-green and black wires to be pulled in at the same time.

Another stroll down memory lane, remembering the nightmares. A EC I worked for way back when used to love the 'box'! 12 solid!! He also was not liking stranded, and those 'new' spools?? I remember the boxes from Carrol Cable, wet, soggy, & moldy, but we didn't know any better back then.

Here you still get those boxes! DIY store rebrands usually come wrapped in plastic (shrinkwrap) instead of in a box. The only difference is the position of the finger hole, it's usually in the middle of the opening section, that reduces the snags considerably. The shrinkwrap packs are ok as long as you use them up quickly, otherwise they tend to fall apart.

My personal record with conduit singles was 8 I think... I ran wiring for a mixed lighting/receptacle circuit and had no less than two 3-ways. In that place I used all colors I could find - black, blue, yellow/green, brown, grey, orange and purple. It was retrofit work, otherwise I'd have used two parallel conduit runs.

My experience has been, as long as you are pulling the wire out of a Cat 5 box it keeps coming but if you throw in in the back of the truck and bounce it around a little, the next time you have a bird's nest in there. No matter what, the last 100 feet is coming out in a ball.
I am experimenting with a box as we speak. It has been sitting undisturbed on a shelf in my shed and I just spool out what I need as I need it. So far so good about half way in. I am pulling everything in raceways so getting the length right is pretty easy. I got in the habit of writing the length of the raceway on a label when I install it. (and it is fresh in my mind)

I remember those flat boxes of TW/THW very well, in fact I cut my teeth in the biz using those. Oh boy were we screwed if it was raining and we had an outdoor pull! Because of the coil effect from pulling from the center, we soon started pulling the coil out of the box and just rolled it out, hand-over-hand, especially on long pulls. The extra time spent doing this avoided the never-ending tangles at the feed end.

Back in the late 70's, THHN was prohibitively-expensive since it was generally only used for gas station wiring. Once I figured out that we could pull nine wires in a 1/2" conduit, I soon realized that the cost issue was minimal. Shortly after this, I found that it took off in popularity and TW/THW pretty much went out to pasture. I just wish that I could have seen the look of glee on my face when I found out that we could pull four #6's in a 3/4" pipe. The rest is history.

Does anybody remember the smell of a fresh box of TW?

We used to get romex packaged like that

I still see it in neighborhood hardware stores, usually boxes of 50 or 100 feet. The 250/500' spools come in the banded, shrink-wrapped packaging.

With a price that almost matches the cost of a 250' roll.

1.5mm2 singles work quite nicely out of the box, 2.5 tend to tangle, requiring a second person to keep untangling.

Small packs of wire/cable seem to be a ripoff no matter where you are - here I found 10m 1.5mm2 NYM (roughly equivalent to a hypothetic #16 NM) for €14.50 and 50m for €14.90... guess what I bought!

Those little boxes are aimed at homeowners who don't know what they would do with 250' of wire.

Of course most don't know what they are doing with 50 feet either.

I don't remember the single conductors in boxes.
Just a few weeks ago cleaning out Dads garage I did find some of my old 14/3 in a box.

The stuff looked like todays 10/3 huge.

I got in the trades in the early 80's.

My record with single wire, as an aside, was 42 red #16 with 2 #14 in a 2-1/2" or 3". The foreman wasn't big on using fill tables, so that one got a bit interesting when, while hand-pulling it, I snapped the #16 lead. Then there was the 3 hours of untangling the resultant head of cable (did I mention the 42 red wires?). The other trades were not thrilled with the 50' of space I needed for that bit'o'joy.

The fill calculation would let you use 1.25" conduit so that wasn't your problem. (based on THHN) I take it you didn't tape this into a bundle first.

Nope, no bundle, but they were tagged at both ends so at least we knew what was what (control lines for a VFD centrifuge). And yes, it was THHN / TFFN.

Holy Cow,

Not only do I remember this boxes, I had to haul about 100 of them for my old boss! The supply house was changing from TW to THHN wire and put out a display of this old wire. My old boss ( who loved a bargain) found out and bought the whole display. All 100 boxes of them. He got it for a good price, but for the next 20 years, he was using old TW wire. When we loaded up the truck, the truck almost got a flat tire! I believe to this day, he still has some, even though he bought in in 1977/1978?

Oh and I just remembered, one of the first jobs we did with this found wire was a swim clubs docks and racing lanes. We had to run a pipe 200-300 feet from dock to dock. Then I had to pull a bunch (7-10) #10 TW solid wire. We didn't have an electric puller, I used my muscles only. (I was also very much younger back then) Well I almost dropped my family jewels trying to pull these wires.

Ahh, glad to jar a few memories... although mostly bad ones!

Even at a very young age, the transition from TW & Boxed Rolls, to THHN & Spools was Sooooooo lovely!

Learned how to feed way before pulling, and of course, the Boxed Rolls of TW were common Protocol!
(typically a mix of wet and dry Boxes).

There are a few other legacy items to post.
Will do so ASAP.

-- Scott

Yeah that bring back old days I haven't see them for a quite a while they are famous for being pain in rear end when the spool in the box is near empty the last 30 or so meters will tangle up like rough yarn ball.

Merci.
Marc