How do I safely remove plastic from wires?

Question

I bought a gas grill last Friday, but when I tried to plug it in, I discovered that the outlet in my garage wasn't working. I pulled the cover off and found the problem right away; the wires were covered with plastic! Everyone knows that wires only work when they're metal. Using my lucky cheese grater, I shaved the pesky plastic off the wires and replaced the cover. Sure enough, the gas grill fired right up!

This morning, I got up and started grating some cheese for an omelet with my lucky cheese grater, but something smelled strange. I traced it back to the garage, where I found smoke coming out of the wall near the outlet I had repaired. Where there's smoke, there's fire, so I poured water into the outlet until the smoked stopped coming out. Apparently I missed some of the plastic garbage on the wires, and it caused them to malfunction.

How can I safely remove the rest of the plastic from the wires? The cheese grater got most of it off, but it's not good in hard-to-reach places.

Answer 1

Certainly you're not serious.

Answer 2

Wire strippers are the normal mode of stripping wire.  Some of us use a pocket knife though.  The plastic stuff is insulation to keep the wires from touching each other and shorting out, which sounds like what you had happen.  If you are inexperienced in electrical repair, call a pro.  It is a lot cheaper than burning down your house.

Answer 3

Use your wiener, it should fit into a small space.

Answer 4

Phil...I understand u need electricity to run ur grill.  But taking plastic off a plug to make it work and later pouring water because it was smoking is indicating something is wrong.

Water and electrical fire is like pouring gas to a match.

I am surprise the breakers didnot kicked in.

Please call a pro to fix that, because if u keep it up....u might burn the house down.

Answer 5

That's funny!  Plugging in a gas grill.  How many people actually think you do that??