Why Wood for Cable Drums?

Wood is inexpensive and largely renewable, and wooden cable drums can be reused or recycled into patio and other casual furniture. Any other material would also be a natural resource, equally ripe for the "wasting," and perhaps rarer, costlier, and less amenable to recycling.

But if you want to build them out of welded stainless steel, or whatever, feel free.

patio and other casual furniture

When were you at my house?

now a days MS drums are also used.pls check.

GI = military? MS = multiple sclerosis?

It costs less to make a wooden drum and then give it away than to pay for the transport back to the factory.

Thats it in a nutshell.

GA.

were you find queen Isabel quote?

Cant we go for GI or MS cable drums

Not sure, I don't know what these stand for.

Any other material which is better option for cable drums?

On rare occasions (for transmission and distribution cable) I have seen cheap waste plastic used (although it is heavy). You want to keep the packaging light but also strong and with no sharp edges or surfaces that could damage the cable sheath. Wood works fine (and is biodegradable unlike plastic). Besides, how would you recycle a non-biodegradable material cable drum when the cable has been removed (it is of no practical use to the end user so it would have to be freighted back to the cable manufacturer)? It just isn't economical.

Assuming GI is Galvanized Iron and MS is Mild Steel, the problem is, they are magnetic. If some uninformed person were to leave the cable on the reel and use it (and I have seen this happen many times), they end up creating an iron core inductor. Even with a wood reel, they still end up with an air core inductor, but that's not as bad. So as others have said, what other non-magnetic material are you going to make them from that is a cheap, light and strong as wood? If you have an answer, you could be a millionaire!

Here in Canada, for small cables, wood is rarely used, usually plastic or light steel. For drums a metre or larger than wood is used, occasionally you will see plastic for specialized cable, like fibre optic; but at this size and larger, whether wood or plastic spools are often returned. There is usually a refundable charge for the spool, if the freight back to the manufacturer exceeds the value of the deposit, then the spool becomes patio furniture.

Cheers

Martin

Yes for small spools of cable and wire the drums are made of plastic but for the large cable that is used to run power lines and such they are normally wood.

Cheapness, availability, and durability.

Where suitable wood is conveniently available in large quantities, it often costs much less to obtain than metal casings. It's often much lighter too, making it easier to handle.

In addition, once buried underground, it can be long-lasting. Hard to believe, but we here in Canada (and in the US) still have some wooden pipes in our municipal water-distribution networks. We don't put those in any more and we replace them with metal ones or plastic ones in concrete. But old pipes that were laid down 100 years ago and that haven't been replaced are often wooden ones.

Cheers! DZ

P.S. The same reasoning applies to using wooden power- and telephone-poles here in Canada. We have plenty of trees, and using wooden poles and replacing them every few decades is cheaper than installing concrete or metal ones everywhere. As for why we don't bury our cables except in densely-populated places ... laying cables underground costs three times as much here as setting up poles and stringing the cables on them.

Plus, just YOU try digging up frozen ground half the year.

Wood lasts for thousands of years in water as is known from archeology. But, back to cable drums, we in Finland use also wooden cable drums and they are returned to cable factories for several rounds of reuse. The same is true to most of wooden pallets.

Cables are supplied in large Metallic drums also. usually HT Cables

Vasuki Rao

Some larger cables are shipped on returnable metal reels.

You are right about recycling the reels into furniture. I don't know of one apprentice electrician who didn't decorate their apartment with wire spool furniture.

Some were quite creative CR4 should have a contest on wire spool furniture design.

Smaller cables are also found on pressed sheet steel cylindrical cores with cardboard edges.

Shipping the steel drums back to the wire manufacture so they can be reused is some times more costly then throwing them away. It would be easier if there was some standard for the spools. So they could be used by any manufacture no matter what the product but that is not the case. Some of the machinery will not except all spools.

Wood being a renewable resource in most cases is cheaper then steel to manufacture spools from. So you do not have that added value to the product. Well made wood spools can be reused. If the cost of shipping them back is feasible. Wood is easier to dispose of.

I wish the spools that we have filling a trailer were wood. They are styrene and the cost of styrene is cheap. So the recyclers will not take it in spool form. As they can not haul enough in that form to profit. Cost of the machinery to us to compact them so they will take them is not cost effective. The manufacture does not want them back. Cost of shipping them there and cleaning them up is more then the new ones I guess.

NO RESSTRICTION OF WOOD CUTTING IN INDIA AND IT IS SO CHEAPER THAN STEEL ,AND GOVT ALSO SLEEPING IN THIS REGARD SO CABLE CO ENJOING THIS FESILITY AT THE COST OF ENVIRONMENT

Please STOP SHOUTING! People here are trying to get some sleep.

<...Wooden cable drums are not reused....>

Why not?