It took me about 45 mins--I was extra cautious since I hadn't extracted laptop battery cells before. I scraped some of the wrappers but attribute that to my inexperience. I'll rewrap them before attempting to use. The process itself really wasn't that bad.
OK the wife is worried that this is too hard and dangerous to do. She read somewhere that you need sand, a firebox, etc. and that they are little pipe bombs. I’ve never done this before so I can’t argue against this and I don’t want to worry her but really how dangerous is this?
Don't worry man, these batteries have SAFE CHEMISTRY. You can look at the SamsungICR18650-28A Data Sheet. They did just about anything and everything to the battery, and NOTHING happened. These are very SAFE Lithium-Ion batteries. Don't think you really need a sand box or any of that stuff to be honest. But whatever you do, just don't set fire to them!
I wish I bought more packs but I didn't want to take a chance since this was my first laptop battery pull. Happy to say everything went great, didn't damage any of the cells. I love these batteries!
I wrote the seller to ask what cells are in that battery and he responded much quicker than I anticipated, but didn’t yield any useful information. Here was the response I received-
As per HKJ’s review of the purple Samsung. The 2800 mAh is only if it is charged to 4.3V. He tested that and got 2600mAh. Then if it is only charged to 4.2, as most of us would anyway, it tested out at 2400 mAh. So really the other deal for 2200 mAh cells is not that much worse. It is also a very good deal. Worth considering.