Around the corner from my house someone has starting dumping trash in the woods scumbags. Anyway I grabbed the cable wires today and extracted approximately 100 grams from about a 12 foot cable. So about 1/4 pound at 2 hours labor. I have more cables to do later. Due to how noob I am stripping wires it was very tedious and took me a long time but was easy and watched TV while doing it.
i find the easiest way to get copper out of cables is a oil barrel furnace. can do about 50 kg at a time and get a nonconformist blob out of it.
That's how it's done at dumps around the world by scavengers. It lends the air a charming acrid toxicity too.
I used to strip all my cables by hand. The scrap dealers near me used to pay a lovely premium for 'bright' copper... you got much less for burnt stuff... You can do it very easily and quickly using 2 stanley knives. If your gonna do it regularly, invest in a pair... one with a curved blade for stripping individual wires and another with a straight blade for the main cable. Once you've split the main cable (particularly if its a mains) you can take out the aluminium wire defenders and get at the copper... I could also show you a scar on my knee where i once cut cable sitting down. Very bad idea...
