peahrens
My worst experience was dealing with some skinny signal wires that have silicone insulation. It was a bugger to strip the end.
You were probably dealing with PTFE (Teflon) wire, silicone strips very easily:
IMG_2716 by Edmund, on Flickr
I recently picked up one of these after finding the price has come down to a reasonable level:
https://tinyurl.com/yc6oqdxz
Mine arrived a few days ago and, as long as you dial the correct wire size on the adjusting wheel, they work great for teflon, PVC and silicone insulated wire. In fact, just last night I used them to scrape off the lacquer coating on magnet wire, (make several passes with that stuff).
I think I'll order a spare!
Cheers! Ed