Rewiring loop construction Fairy Lights

[liberatordeluxe]

Just wondered if it was possible to turn a loop construction set of fairy lights into a straight line conscruction? Some sets are on a loop and god knows why as it makes decorating impossible. Anyone ever tried rewiring?

 

[cuffs054]

Problem being that those were wired in "series", newer lights in "parallel(sp).

 

[d-jones]

I altered a set of mini lights for use in a little mantle top village once. It was a fairly straightforward project. I simply cut one of the wires a few inches from the plug, stretched the lights out in a straight line so I could measure the length of wire I'd need for the return run,  then spliced it in. The actual splices were made using a soldering iron and then covered with heat shrinkable tubing. I've been using them for about twelve years now.

 

[artcurus]

It's not recommended if the lights are run off the mains. Let me try and explain this.

In the tube radio days (1930's through the 1960's), there were two ways to run tubes, off a full wave power supply with a transformer (xformer job is divide and boost/reduce the voltage to feed various parts of the circuit). For instance, in my Packard Bell, it uses a full wave power supply with a 5U4 tube. The voltage is boosted to 400 for the output tubes, then dropped to service the rest of the circuit, the lowest drop down is 5 volts for the rectifier (the glowy thing inside of the tube). The key here is that each of the 18 tubes in the stereo, are connected to their own filament source. Each tube gets 6 or 5 volts depending on it's filament requirement, and if one goes out, the circuit can still more or less function. This is called parallel.

The other option was series. Series doesn't use a transfomer. It depends on the actual filament voltage of the tubes to create the voltage drop.

This is called the AA5 or All American 5 radio, here's the tube list,

Converter: 12BE6
IF amplifier: 12BA6
Detector and first audio amplifier: 12AV6 or 12AT6
Audio power output: 50C5 or the less-common 50B5
Rectifier: 35W4

In the case, the "12", "35" and "50" is the amount of voltage the filament "eats".

Starting with 120 volts from the wall, it's 12+12+12+50+35= 121

If a tube burns out, the entire radio dies until that tube is replaced.

This is where your fairy lights come in. They to are rated for a certain amount of voltage. 10-12 light American fairy lights are rated at 10- 12 volts each. 10 X 12 = 120 volts. If the lamps have a shunt installed, the lights can continue to operate, but the voltage is raised on the others, which can cause the others to burn out much quicker.

The short story is, don't do it unless you have a transformer rated at the voltage for each light, then you can separate them and run each light off the transformer. (which is what my Packard Bell is doing with parallell circuit for the tube filament line, each tube has it's own wire connected to the xformer).

 

[d-jones]

I think you guys are seriously over-complicating this. He is describing a simple set of series wired mini lights that form a loop, starting and ending at the plug. This was, and is still, a very common configuration. Modifying the string the way I described above changes nothing beyond the way the lights lay. You still end up with a set of series wired mini lights with the same number of lights and the same voltage drop across each one.

 

[artcurus]

simple set of series wired mini lights that form a loop

^ here's the key, nothing changes in the final equation.

In this case, these lights are wired one after another, each light has a specific voltage drop.. This configuration was also used in very early American Christmas lights. Connecting them in parallel,would cause too much voltage and pretty much blow the bulb right out of the socket.

If one light burned out, the entire string went out.

The only other way to do it, as djones mentioned, would be to cut the wire after the final bulb, straighten the loop out, and run a longer wire from where the wire was cut, to the plug.