Wire Stripper

A wire stripper is a small, hand-held tool used to strip the insulation from an electrical wire so the bare conductor underneath can be connected or joined. Manual wire strippers can handle wire of almost any size, while compound automatic wire strippers, which open and close a set of matched blades through a mechanical linkage, are generally built for a set range such as 8 to 26 AWG. Stuart G. Wood of Brooklyn, New York patented the first compound automatic wire stripper in 1915, and in 1943, working from Rockville, Illinois, he patented an improved version with reinforced construction, replaceable blades and blade stops, along with a mechanism that held the tool's halves open after stripping so the newly bared wire would not be crushed; Herman Gerhard Jan Voogd of the Netherlands separately refined the design by eliminating its original, awkward four-bar linkage, and in 1959 Eugene D. Hindenburg of DeKalb, Illinois patented a further refinement that changed the sequence so the stripping blades opened before the rest of the mechanism returned to rest. Newer laser wire strippers use a computer-controlled beam to remove insulation from fine gauge wire without nicking the conductor beneath.