Like others, when the wire has done it's job, I tend to unwire the aluminium and straighten it and re-use it. If this process looks like causing any harm i.e. breaking twigs off then I cut it. What do the rest of our members think of this practise, am I being a meany or just frugal?


Ash

I do the same...

Heck I do it with copper....... course, the stuff I'm using isn't annealed and I just reuse it to make hooks (to hang weights off of) or as guy wires

Long as it isn't harming the tree, I see no issue with it Assuming the tree didn't have some sort of weird disease that might be hanging around on the wire that is......

I reuse it, if I can get it off the tree in one piece. I have masses of lengths of wire floating around.
Some even get put back in the wire bag...LOL

I scrounged a BUNCH of copper wire when I was working on a restaurant remodel... almost every wire in the place (erm, maybe even ALL of them) got replaced and any that were a decent length followed me home. So I stripped it by tying it to the bumper and just skinning it with a utility knife, then tossed rolls of it on the bbq and now I have all the 12 gauge I could want plus some 10 and some 14. Also acquired a spool of motor-wrapping wire that got dinged up and tangled, so now I have somewhere around 5 miles of 22 gauge (give or take) that works nicely for small stuff. Only drawback on that one is its coated, so it says bright n shiny. Meh, minor issues!

Aluminum definitely gets saved though wherever possible, that I have to pay for.

I use aluminum too. I often save the smaller wire. I tried removing thicker wire once and I broke a branch. I don't even try to unwind the thicker stuff now. If the ramification is delicate I cut it all off. I hate nocking off buds more then I hate tossing wire.

I'm with Barbara on this. One bad experience was enough to have me cutting wire off instead of unwinding. With many species, it takes (average, of course) a half of a growing season to get a bud .. knocking it off to save a few cents worth of wire was utterly frustrating. Of course common sense dictates most people's actions (or so the theory goes). So if you've got wire around a bud that you've got in just the right place, I would hope most people would cut the wire off around it rather than risk knocking the bud off.

I do suppose this applies more to detail wiring and trees closer to fine refinement than to trees during coarse development.