Make your own foam grips for drop handlebars

Step 2 Set up the cutter and cut

I already had some stainless steel wire I determined to be .018 inch thick. That is 25 gage. Testing it with my ohmmeter showed it to have a resistance of about 1/4 Ohm per foot. I made a feeble attempt to utilize Ohm's Law and calculated that eight feet of wire would dissipate the 1.5 Amp. output of my automobile battery trickle charger on the 6 Volt setting. But, the cutter generated no heat in the wire. I flipped the switch on the trickle charger to 12 Volts and 3 Amps. The ammeter on my digital meter told me the cicuit was drawing 3.8 Amps--a little over the rating of the transformer in my (homemade) trickle charger, but just under the rating of the 4 Amp. bridge rectifier I used in the charger.

The cutter really needed only about a foot of wire, but I wanted to avoid burning up my charger or making the wire so hot that it drooped or melted. So, I used eight feet of wire. The duck tape you see holds turns of the extra wire so the coiled turns do not touch one another and the full resistance of the wire could be utilized. It worked fine. I shut the trickle charger off and made sure it cooled completely before cutting the next noodle section down in diameter, just to be safe.

Comments

[glorybe]

Most duct tape conducts electricity. Your actual wire length may not be what you think it is.

[Phil B]

I had never considered that duct (duck) tape might be conductive. I believe I did a check with my ohmmeter before and after the duct tape and the resistance was the same. I do not think I experienced conductivity because of the duct tape. All sorts of other options to keep turns of wire isolated are very much possible and easy to do.