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Step 7Making a Firefly LED String - Part 1 of 4
Prepare the wires -
Ngineering.com has a good writeup of how to work with this magnet wire and covers tinning as well as twisting it which are two steps of making a firefly LED string. However I've never been satisfied with the results of burning away the insulation as they describe in the guide and have instead settled on gently scraping the insulation away with a razor. It's quite possible that I simply wasn't doing the tinning steps right (despite many attempts) and your own mileage may vary.
Cut red and green wires to desired length of string. I prefer to use different lengths of wire for each firefly string so that once assembled they don't all hang at the same "altitude". Generally I calculated the lengths that I was going to use by figuring out the shortest string (based on measuring the jar I was going to use), the longest string, and dividing the interval between them equally into 6 measurements. The values I ended up with for a standard widemouth jelly jar are: 2 5/8", 3", 3 3/8", 3 3/4", 4 1/8", 4 5/8".
Strip one end of each wire exposing a millimeter or less. Using the razor method, gently scrape the insulation away by softly dragging the blade over the wire. Turn the wire and repeat until the insultation has been removed. Using this method I find it hard to only strip a millimeter of wire so I simply cut off the excess.
Ngineering.com has a good writeup of how to work with this magnet wire and covers tinning as well as twisting it which are two steps of making a firefly LED string. However I've never been satisfied with the results of burning away the insulation as they describe in the guide and have instead settled on gently scraping the insulation away with a razor. It's quite possible that I simply wasn't doing the tinning steps right (despite many attempts) and your own mileage may vary.
Cut red and green wires to desired length of string. I prefer to use different lengths of wire for each firefly string so that once assembled they don't all hang at the same "altitude". Generally I calculated the lengths that I was going to use by figuring out the shortest string (based on measuring the jar I was going to use), the longest string, and dividing the interval between them equally into 6 measurements. The values I ended up with for a standard widemouth jelly jar are: 2 5/8", 3", 3 3/8", 3 3/4", 4 1/8", 4 5/8".
Strip one end of each wire exposing a millimeter or less. Using the razor method, gently scrape the insulation away by softly dragging the blade over the wire. Turn the wire and repeat until the insultation has been removed. Using this method I find it hard to only strip a millimeter of wire so I simply cut off the excess.
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