Nailed wood reels and plywood reels

How each one is built

A nailed wood reel starts with boards. Each flange is two or more layers, or plies, of lumber laid at an angle to each other and nailed through. Southwire describes its all-wood reels as two-ply with the layers nailed together at 90 degrees, for medium to heavy loads. Ely Reel makes 2, 3 and 4-ply nailed flanges in Southern Yellow Pine. The drum is made of staves, and on the bigger reels steel through-bolts clamp the flanges to it and a steel hub or plate reinforces the arbor hole.

A plywood reel starts with sheet. Each flange is a disc cut from plywood, already cross-laminated by the mill, so it needs no ply-by-ply nailing. Southwire's plywood reels use either drums of laminated fiberboard tubing, its G series, or shaped wooden staves, its N series, and it rates them for light to medium loads.

Side by side

Weight at the same size

Southwire's own table lets you compare almost like for like. Its C-3 nailed wood reel is 23x10x12 and weighs about 30 pounds. Its N-3 plywood reel is 23.75x10x12 and weighs about 16 pounds. Superior Essex shows the same gap at 30x18x12: its plywood premises fiber reel is listed at 28 pounds, its outside-plant copper wood reel at 46 pounds and its outside-plant fiber wood reel at 59 pounds.

Lighter is not worse. For a contractor carrying a reel of building wire up a stair, or a distributor shipping small cuts by parcel, half the tare weight is a real saving. For a utility hanging thousands of pounds of cable on an arbor, the heavier nailed build is the point.

Strength and how they fail

A nailed flange fails board by board. One cracked board or a few popped nails still leave a flange that holds; the reel gets weaker gradually and shows it. That is why a nailed reel with damage can often be graded down rather than thrown out, and why reel makers can refurbish them. Okonite explains that Class 1 standard-duty and Class 2 heavy-duty wood reels returned to a reel maker can be refurbished to the level of new reels and sold back to cable plants.

A plywood flange fails as a sheet. Its cross-laminated veneers resist splitting well, which is why a thin disc can do the job on a small reel. But once the veneers separate at the edge or a crack runs across the disc, there is no board to swap out. Water is the enemy: plywood that has sat wet delaminates, starting at the rim.

Arbor reinforcement follows weight in both types. The military reel spec MIL-DTL-12000 requires a metal bushing or plate at the arbor of wood and plywood reels with a gross weight of 2,500 pounds or more.

Hubs, arbors and hardware

Hardware is where the two builds look most alike. Southwire puts a 3.125-inch arbor hole in both its nailed wood reels and its plywood reels, and 2 inches in its small G-series plywood spools, so the same stand shaft usually fits both mid-size types. On heavier reels Southwire uses steel hubs, generally pressed in, to carry the shaft load. Through-bolts clamp nailed flanges to the drum; small plywood spools often rely on the drum tube and fasteners alone.

Southwire's series letters also say what each reel was meant for. Its A series is nailed wood for bare aluminum and ACSR conductor, the C series nailed wood reinforced for copper and steel, the N series plywood and nailed wood for lighter loads, and the E and G series plywood for building wire. The number in each class name is the reel's volume in thousands of cubic inches: an A-99 holds 99,000 cubic inches of winding space.

Assembled reels and kits

New nailed reels do not always arrive in one piece. Ely Reel ships its reels assembled or as kits, which cuts storage space and freight because flat flanges and bundled staves pack far tighter than finished reels. Used reels, by contrast, always travel assembled, which is why the trailer counts for empties are so much lower than you might expect from the wood involved.

That difference is worth remembering if you only need a few large reels for a long-term use. A new kit shipped flat may cost less to move than a used assembled reel from across the country. For mid sizes in quantity, a used lot nearby usually wins. We will say which is the case when we quote.

What each is worth used

Nailed wood reels in the mid and large sizes are the core of the used-reel trade. They carry enough cable to be worth reusing, they can be repaired, and buyers for power cable, fiber, wire rope and re-spooling all want them. Their weight and size mean freight is a bigger part of the price, so the count per trailer matters a lot.

Plywood reels are mostly small, and small reels are cheap to make. Used, they are worth most to buyers who need many of one size nearby, such as a distributor cutting building wire, and least when they must travel far on their own. They do well as part of a mixed load that is already moving. Bring us both; we write them up separately on the lot sheet.

Returning them to a maker

The take-back programs we know of are built around nailed wood. Sonoco's EcoReel collects truckloads of nailed wood and polyfiber reels, and its packing guide asks for flanges at least 30 inches across and 1.5 inches thick. Service Wire takes back only its own labeled nailed wood reels with 30 to 72 inch flanges, in full truckloads. Dura-Line's credit covers only its own steel reels.

So a plywood reel, or a nailed reel from the wrong maker, or a part load, usually has nowhere to go but the open market. That is the gap we work in: we buy empty wooden reels of either build, by the lot, and place them with buyers who need that size.

How to tell them apart

• Look at the flange edge. Separate boards with gaps or nail rows mean nailed wood; thin even layers of veneer mean plywood.
• Look at the face. Nailed flanges show board joints and nail patterns, often in concentric circles; plywood shows a single grain sheet.
• Lift one corner. At the same size, plywood is noticeably lighter.
• Check the drum. A smooth cardboard-like tube is fiberboard on a plywood spool; boards are staves.
• Read the stencil. Makers' series names, such as Southwire's G and N plywood series, often give it away.