Vent: wasted $150 on a 'pro' grade wire stripper that stripped me instead

I grabbed one of those fancy auto-adjusting wire strippers from a supply house in Denver last winter, thinking it'd save me time on a big commercial job. Turned out it mangled the insulation on 12 and 14 gauge Romex so bad I had to redo about 40 feet of runs. Anybody else get burned by a tool that looked like a time-saver but turned into a headache?

3 comments

3 Comments

phoenixk647d ago

Honestly that sounds like the Klein auto-stripper everyone swears by. What brand was it? I had a similar thing happen with a Milwaukee model that was supposed to "grip and strip" but it just crushed the wire instead.

nelson.wren7d ago

Them auto-strippers are a perfect example of something that looks good on paper but fails in real life. Reminds me of that time I bought a self-leveling compound for my living room floor that was supposed to save hours of work. Ended up with a lumpy mess that took twice as long to fix. Same pattern plays out everywhere - people rushing to grab the newest shortcut without realizing the old way was actually the reliable way. Saw a guy at the hardware store return a fancy electric screwdriver that stripped every screw he put it on. Sometimes the basic manual tools just work better because they let you feel what you're doing instead of trusting some gadget to get it right.

charles_coleman7d ago

Man that really stinks... $150 down the drain plus having to redo all that work is a double kick in the pants. I've been there with tools that promise the world and just make things worse. It's like the more they try to automate stuff the more they forget the basics of how wire actually feels in your hands. I still reach for my old manual strippers most days because I know exactly what they'll do every time. Hope you can get your money back or at least salvage some use out of that thing for something lighter.