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
Scott " 35 " Thompson Just Say NO To Green Eggs And Ham!
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 mm˛ 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.
The product of rotation, excitation and flux produces electricty.
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?