Lead sheathed telephone cable

[mattg4321]

Just found this on a job today. Lead sheathed. Telephone cable? Never seen this before. Anyone?

 

[Dustydazzler]

Have come across loads of redundant lead cable in old houses but can’t remember telephone cable..
that said when pulling out old lead cable From under floors I have never really looked at the cores.

 

[R-fur]

Lead sheathed phone cable was quite common years ago, not so common now.

 

[mattg4321]

I've seen loads of old lead twin and earth but never telephone cable.

 

[freddo]

There's quite a bit of it running about outside buildings here, fixed with those nails with the strip of lead on top.

I also have some old rubber phone cable with a braided covering, the rubber insulation was perished badly on the parts that were run outside the shop where I found this, the internal bits were a bit better, so I kept some to add with all the other old useless crap I hoard here.

 

[Lucien Nunes]

At one time, most outdoor multicore telephone cable, apart from bare wire on insulators, was lead-sheathed. From single-pair double-cotton insulated up to thousands of pairs with paper insulation the jacket was lead, and where jointed inline or in boxes the joints would be gas-tight. They could be works of art and sometimes the jointer would put his name in the lead.

Back in the day, many houses had bare dropwires from the DP, so the only lead that would be needed was from there to the surge arrestor or junction box. But in flats, you might have a 20-pair lead coming into the basement, then a couple of 10-pairs going to the landings and single pairs going to the individual flats.

Other industries used the same cable extensively. A while back I had to repair one of the cables running from the console to the relay of a pipe organ, made up of a dozen 20-pair lead-sheathed 26SWG DCC phone cables. The very edge of one cable had been pinched by some wall panels and a couple of cores shorted. Beautiful cable from the 1930s, don't know who made it but the insulation and construction was of the finest quality and I felt privileged to handle it. I think it's still in use.