Making good headway on the lower deck lighting. The Party Light strings are installed and I have begun on the reflectors. There is a lamp socket between every cross member. Turns out the 24″ spacing of the light strings works quite well on 16″ centers. The extra bit of cable gave me flexibility of lamp location and there is not so much extra cable that it is problematic to route. Burned through like a gazillion nylon clamps and #6 screws securing everything! All in all, worked out sweet.
I turned to my trusty roof flashing material once again for reflectors. Pre-cut 5″ x 7″ aluminum flashing panels from Home Depot. Knowing the reflectors will likely be uninstalled/reinstalled during the course of sub-roadbed and wiring work I made them all the same so they are interchangeable. If I take down a bunch of reflectors to do under-bench work then I don’t have to remember which goes where. The obstacle was mounting hole standardization. For that I made a temporary jig. You know my love for cheap tools made on the fly. Here’s another one. My reflector drilling and bending jig.
I don’t want anything to extend above or below the 3-1/2″ benchwork. The Party Light sockets cannot be separated from their cable and I didn’t want to bore giant holes to pass the sockets through the cross members so here is my solution. I router cut a slot across the bottom of the cross members just large enough to fit the cable and a 3/8″ nylon cable clamp installed upside down. Think a router throws a lot of saw dust? Try holding one upside down! Holy crap, it was like working in a blizzard of saw dust. Thank goodness the cuts were short. Now, standing in the aisle looking down the railroad you can’t see a single wire. Mission accomplished.
I continue making and mounting reflectors. 24 are in place with 48 more to go. After that comes mounting LED strips.
Light, light, and more light!
