Part 6 Hiding the Wires

Hiding LEDs in attic and ceiling of main level:

I have wanted to light the interior of the shop and the attic without having obvious lights as the shop is supposed to be a 1920s era building. So I have set up some hidden lights.

These will be 3 volt LEDs (1.8mm), and each will have its own wires running to the power jack. I’ve also sanded the surface of these lights to avoid the spot-light effect.

Since these lights have arrived with 14" wires, I need to add extra wire in order to snake, via hidden pathways, them down to the power jack. To do this, I began underneath the building. I pushed a red and a black wire (from my spools of extra wire) up through the hole at the back (as shown before).

Hiding them presented something of a problem. Most shops I've ever been in have, in some corner, a stack of wood of various sizes. I made a piece for this set of wires out of channel trim. I glued two pieces of channel (looks like a 'u') trim together to form a hollow piece of wood to stand in the back corner.

I ran the wires all the way through this piece up to the edge of the attic, and then I attached the red wire to the red wire of my 1.8mm LED and the same with the black wires. (Am I boring you? Surely most of you could deduce this part, but for the advantage of some who cannot 'see' this, I'm explaining in detail.)

To connect these wires, one could solder them, but I believe they will be secure enough by simply being twisted together. I slid a piece of shrink tube over each, then twisted the LED red to the red from my spool. I did the same with the black wires. I slid the shrink tube over each twisted connection and held this over a candle flame until the tubing had shrunk over the connection making it pretty secure.

I then taped the wires in place, so I could measure the length. I cut the spool wire underneath the building and stripped about 1/3" of the insulation off the end of each wire. [see: Make wires shorter or longer, strip the wire!  http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/video.html ] 

I tested the connection to make certain that the LED would light. Testing was simple. I held the bare end of the red wire against the positive side of a 3v. battery and the naked end of the black wire against the negative side of the same battery. Yay! That LED lit up.

Next, I put a piece of masking tape on those two wires and marked them as Right Attic and taped them to the bottom of the building. Using Aleene's Tack-it Over & Over (because I want to be able to change these LEDs if one of them should go bad), I glued the wires down along the top edge of the middle rafter and along the attic wall. These wires show, but I intend to paint them tan to blend with the wood and pile some junque in front of the wires to hide them. Every attic has some junk, right?

  

For the second attic light, I bared the ends of the spool-wire, this time before threading them up into the building. I'm learning. I followed the same proceedure. Here, however, I found that my shrink tube connection would end up inside of the channel trim and would not fit. Not wishing to waste the wire, I found a larger piece of channel trim.

In the picture below, you can see that one LED is installed and the second one is at the beginning of being installed. 

Just in case anyone would look in through the attic window, I painted over the wires with white paint. And this next photo shows the black and red wires before they were glued into the larger piece of channel trim.

Below, you can see the underside of the building where the wires to the first attic LED are waiting eventual connection to the power source and on/off switch. You can also see the second attic LED wires in preparation for their being glued down, and marked. 

I tested the new connection and found it worked, so glued and marked the second attic light.

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My next effort will be to provide some indirect light for the main area of the shop. To accomplish this, I have made holes and grooves in the ceiling of the main floor.

Below, you can see the attic-floor/main-room’s ceiling lying on my work table waiting for my order to arrive. I have not yet decided how I will hide the wiring. I want the LEDs and wires to be removable in case the need should arise in the future.

Stay tuned for more.

Part 5 Constructing Fixtures - porch light

Constructing Fixtures 2

Making the porch light:

I need a porch light for this building, and I want it to be something like the drawing below. I’ve looked everywhere on the web for lamp parts that can be wired with LEDs and have finally decided that I need to make them myself.

First, I tried a paper cone. This is more difficult that it would seem. No one seems to have a water cooler with those paper cone drinking cups anymore. So I tried to make a paper cone. Each cone I made leaned ever so slightly off center even when drawn with drafting compass and ruler. I also drew the shape on the computer to get it absolutely symmetrical, but it still did not turn out to my liking.

Needless to say, I did not take pictures of these failures.

Next, I bought a ‘yard’ light which turned out to be too large (2 inches in diameter). I thought, oh well, I’ll just make a smaller item of similar shape inside this light. I made one from polyclay but when I baked it, it crumpled a bit and looks more like an old hat than the shade of a fixture.

Now I was frustrated because nothing was coming out like my drawing:

Part numbers in above drawing are JAR-JAF.com parts.

Then I had to stop this project because of the demands of my day job. I also had to go for my annual physical. While there, I asked the nurse if she had anything that looked like a cone and told her why I needed it. “I’ll ask,” she said very generously. When she came back into the room after the doc was finished with me, she gave me the item below:

 Above is the part I was interested in, so I brought it home and began by spraying it with Krylon Fusion, so I

could paint it after cutting it down.

I then drilled a hole in the base of the vial (or as it will 

end up) the top of the fixture shade.

  I've initially fit the parts of this fixture together. The wires run easily through the brass rod, but the 3 volt LED itself and its base connections do not fit well up in the new shade. I need a larger part for concealing the base of the LED, a ceiling plate, a metal top for the shade and paint.

I have ordered these from JAR-JAF.com.

While I wait, I will begin wiring some attic lights which will not have shades as they

will be hidden in the rafters.

I urge you to look at other sources for making fixtures like Kris’s blog

http://1inchminisbykris.blogspot.com/2010/11/november-project-lamp-shade-part-1.html

Stay Tuned... for when I get my order from JAR-JAF

Wow, I totally forgot to come back to this section. Here are photos of the finished porch fixture: 

Ready to be installed

In place but not yet glued as I still needed to check the wiring before gluing when the photo was taken