Wire! we need it, its expensive, and hard to find in weird colors with stripes etc… I’m also a Hot Rodder so I find myself working on various automotive projects. one of which is a turbo LS build. so as most of you can probably see when you open your hood, there’s tons of wiring… any modern engine needs a slew of wires to manage its running. so after seeing people build custom wiring harnesses for their engines, where they use the same colors to extend or build a harness, I vowed to never do that (imagine troubleshooting that when something goes wrong!?) so as it is, I usually buy an extra harness to chop up so that way it gives me extra wire lengths that are the right colors… so here’s what I started with…
thats also “extra wires” from the yamaha organ… but none the less, I got tired of fishing out one wire at a time… so, I took about 4 hours, and cut all the plugs off to save when I fubar one on the hotrod lol filed those in an organizer and started pulling wires and coiling them for future use… just one engine harness netted this…
I’ve got a mile of usable wire now… for what ever purpose I need it for. Now I got that extra harness for free because it didn’t have the engine computer to go with it. almost never do they sell complete harnesses, in junkyards, they tend to get cut, and messed up. thus making them useless as intended, which makes them cheap! yes its pretty time consuming, but in the end its worth it…
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What wire gauge is the wiring harnessing you get? I was able too get a ton on old wire from cheapo computer power supplies. They are very limited in color though and size it is about 18 awg because of the standard for power supplies.
I find that I use 22 awg for perfboard it fits just right. But lately I am thinking for going for 24 awg if I buy new stuff because 22 awg you need to slip it in just right or it wont fit all the strands in Perfboard.
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Thanks for the tip.
Splitting up network cable. Old USB and centronics (paralell printer) cable. Can be useful.
Fire/security/telephone cable is great for breadboards and links.
I had years of coated copper tracing wire from an old transformer.
Saw a brace of Moog synths in the 90’s connected with shielded tv Ariel cables.
Still to be found in goodwill/ charity shops.
Keeps it all out of landfill
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yeah it sure does! speaking of which I need to look for some solid core for my breadboards 
I’ve already robbed most of my short inks for my power supply on strip board lol
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Telecommunications cable. All solid core, colour coded, and fits in a breadboard. Rip out that old land line and extensions. Better yet rip out someone else’s (who they gonna call?)
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I thought about it lol… actually I have some cat6 somewhere that im not going to use for its intended purpose, I’ll probably use that… its twisted pair though so cool looking curly cue connections lol
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years ago a friend and I were collecting old home organs people were getting rid of . so we basically stripped them down sold speakers and amps but I ended up with a lot of wire / keybeds etc. left over . so thats what I have been using 22-24 ga. in various colors . as seen on left side of picture.
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