I got some of that wire when I bought a set of vintage OKI wire wrap tools on eBay. I had never seen a wrap tool like it, before, and I just had to see what the heck it was all about.
The tool was a blue pencil with a wrap bit on one end and a small spool of wire on the other. The wire ran through the body of the pencil and out the wrap bit. So it wrapped the wire backwards. (Well, at least the first wrap would be upside down; maybe you were supposed to wrap the first end with a separate tool and just finish the other side with this?). There was a small slide switch on the side which acted like a break. So if you put the brake on and wrapped a wire, it would eventually snap off the wire.
I'm pretty handy, but I never did figure out how it was supposed to work, what with the insulation still on the wire. The wire it came loaded with was 30AWG but with some kind of poly insulation, as already mentioned. If you wrapped with the insulation still on, the wire would sorta cut through the insulation and maybe-sometimes make a connection with a fat third of an inch worth of loose wrap with insulation oozing out between strands. It didn't seem to work at all with kynar. The entire kit ended up in the garbage, including the wire.
I eventually learned there is another kind of kynar wire made for CSW (cut strip wrap) bits, which cut and strip the ends, automatically. I wonder if that would have worked. I don't see where the excess insulation would have gone, though.
FWIW, this type of CSW kynar is slightly thinner but it is slicker and definitely isn't as flexible. I gave that reel away.
magnet wire with solderable insulation
I agree that would be nice to have in a pinch. But once you learn to deal with kynar, it's just easier. Unless you don't have the space for the insulation, even this stuff would be bottom drawer material for 99% of uses. It takes 0.1 seconds to flow a small 30AWG joint if you don't have to wait for insulation to melt.
r8xpilot (and OP, if you're in the US):
I have been buying my Kynar wire from eBay seller "cableall" for the last 10 years (so maybe 3 purchases of a 1000 foot reel
). It ships from "Wes Bel" which is the same sender/dropshipper where some of my Mouser components arrive from. It's the same stuff that Radio Shack sells. I am very particular about my bodge wire. I've occasionally tried to save money by buying from Hong Kong or China, and it wasn't the same stuff.
So with a 1000 foot reel of the green stuff I treat like it's free, and a small roll or another color which I use like it's gold (for, say, twisted pairs or for indicating one end of a connector), I'm pretty much set. I just cut off an arms length or so, what is easy to manage, get er done, and throw away any leftover. Great for making making custom cables with pin header, getting signals to logic analyzer, and the like, too. I also primarily use this kind of wire for breadboarding, sticking pinheaders into the board and wrapping the connections. When done with the breadboarded circuit, it all just goes into the bin. I don't have a lot use for reusable jumpers. Another example is if I want to connect my DMM to ground, temporarily. More often than not, I don't have a place to put an alligator or mini clip that is secure. I have a banana plug with a square section filed in the top. I just wrap the end of a piece of kynar around the square post and solder the other end to the board. When I'm done, the kynar immediately gets ripped off and goes into the bin, and the special banana plug gets snapped back into the holder that is glued to my meter. Life is too short, and kynar is too cheap.
I have a 1000 foot roll dispenser/cutter permanently mounted to the right of my hot air within arms reach. It's a consumable as much as a component. Probably more than half of this wire I buy ends up in the bin.