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Step 3Install the Lights and Extend the Wires
Be warned, this is a fairly long and arduous step!
The reason a strand of solar powered Christmas lights works so well for this project is that it has a centralized driver that runs 60 individual lights. The big drawback of course is that you're going to have to extend the wires a bit unless you want all the bottles clustered in one spot.
With sixty lights to install in thirteen bottles, I couldn't just divide them up equally. What I ended up doing was putting four in each small bottle, five in each large one, and six in the big Patron bottle.
Before you begin putting the lights in the bottles, cut several lengths of speaker wire about three feet long. The measurement doesn't have to be precise as long as all of the strands are about the same length. Strip about 1/2" of insulation from each end.
Start at the end of the Christmas lights farthest away from the battery. Pick your first bottle and decide how many lights are going into it. In the middle of one of the wires between the last light going into your bottle and the next one in line that isn't going in, cut it in half and strip 1/2" of insulation from the wire. With the set of lights I was working on there were five wires between each light, which meant making sure to have at least that many lengths of speaker wire handy, one of which would have been separated into two separate wires.
Splice the wires Christmas light wire and the speaker wire at each end and solder them up. Cut another Christmas light wire and repeat, until you've done them all and that section of wire has been extended. Wrap each of the spliced sections in electrical tape, making sure none of the bare wires are touching.
Stuff the LEDs into the bottle. Take a strip from a paper towel, fold it up a few times and wrap it around the wires just above the electrical tape. You need just enough paper towel to create an interference fit between the paper towel and the neck of he bottle, holding the wires in place temporarily.
Once this is done, get another bottle ready and repeat.
The reason a strand of solar powered Christmas lights works so well for this project is that it has a centralized driver that runs 60 individual lights. The big drawback of course is that you're going to have to extend the wires a bit unless you want all the bottles clustered in one spot.
With sixty lights to install in thirteen bottles, I couldn't just divide them up equally. What I ended up doing was putting four in each small bottle, five in each large one, and six in the big Patron bottle.
Before you begin putting the lights in the bottles, cut several lengths of speaker wire about three feet long. The measurement doesn't have to be precise as long as all of the strands are about the same length. Strip about 1/2" of insulation from each end.
Start at the end of the Christmas lights farthest away from the battery. Pick your first bottle and decide how many lights are going into it. In the middle of one of the wires between the last light going into your bottle and the next one in line that isn't going in, cut it in half and strip 1/2" of insulation from the wire. With the set of lights I was working on there were five wires between each light, which meant making sure to have at least that many lengths of speaker wire handy, one of which would have been separated into two separate wires.
Splice the wires Christmas light wire and the speaker wire at each end and solder them up. Cut another Christmas light wire and repeat, until you've done them all and that section of wire has been extended. Wrap each of the spliced sections in electrical tape, making sure none of the bare wires are touching.
Stuff the LEDs into the bottle. Take a strip from a paper towel, fold it up a few times and wrap it around the wires just above the electrical tape. You need just enough paper towel to create an interference fit between the paper towel and the neck of he bottle, holding the wires in place temporarily.
Once this is done, get another bottle ready and repeat.
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I went with electrical tape for a couple of reasons though. The ends are sealed inside the bottles, mainly you are insulating the wires from each other and don't have to worry about weather in this case. Their location in the neck of the bottle, near the top, should make them hard to see so appearance shouldn't matter too much. Also, electrical tape is cheaper and doesn't require a heat source to set up.
You are right though, in most circumstances heat shrink tubing is WAY better than electrical tape!