Red nose for a white wire deer

I am particularly pleased that I figured out how to modify a string of Christmas lights to have only one working bulb.

I had just rewired my last Christmas deer, converting it to LED bulbs. (Restringing an outdoor lighted deer)  But I wanted him to have a red nose like Rudolph.  I could have swapped out the tiny clear LED bulb at the tip of his nose for a tiny red one.  But what I wanted was a bigger, more impressive bulb.  Not a giant C6 bulb, but a reasonable 7mm bulb.

I can be kind of obsessive when I want something.  So I had no qualms about cannibalizing a perfectly good string of multi-color lights to make my nose.

Side note - I could have sworn Christmas lights used to be available in stores right up until Christmas.  I looked at 3 stores before I found the colored strand of lights I needed 11 days before Christmas.

Anyway.  I tested the lights and they worked just fine.  Then I cut the wires a foot from the plug.  I had coincidentally ended up with a socket 10 inches from the deer's nose. So a foot would give me plenty of wire to work with.

This was a three wire strand.  After stripping the wires, I tested different combinations of twisting the wires together, trying to get the bulb to light up again.  When I twisted all three wires together and plugged it in, there was a spark.

Thanks to the Internet, I learned that only two of the wires needed to be twisted together.  But it didn't matter which ones I twisted together.  The bulb wouldn't light.

Eventually I realized there were fuses in the plug and I'd blown them.  Helpfully, the manufacturer included one fuse in the package with the lights.  But there were two fuses in the plug.

I dug through my Christmas containers until I found the fuse tester and a baggie of spare fuses.  Of course, the batteries in the fuse tester were bad and had to be replaced before I could use it.

Yep, both fuses were bad.  I replaced them both with fuses tested and proven to be good.  Replacing these is not a piece of cake. The fuses are about the size of a grain of rice.

But when the fuses were replaced, the bulb lit up!

The working configuration has the bulb line and middle line twisted together.  The outside line is only needed for stringing light strands together.  I cut that one short and taped the end to isolate it.  I taped everything together and installed it at the deer's nose.

Was it worth the trouble?  

I think so. 

Restringing an outdoor lighted deer

I have 3 five-foot-tall lighted holiday deer that I like very much.  Plus two smaller deer.  But they are lit with the small incandescent bulbs and the wiring was getting frayed.  I looked for new deer, but couldn't find any like the ones I have.  Replacing them would also create the quandary of how to dispose of the old deer.  They were still good deer.  I couldn't just trash them.

So I rewired them.

I decided to replace the lengths of incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs.  White wire was prohibitively expensive, so I settled on green wire.  I have no idea why green would be cheaper, or more available, than white.  I also don't know where the manufacturers of wire decorations get their lights. I couldn't find any wiring with those nifty clips already attached.  So I settled for zip ties.

Lots and lots of zip ties.

Here are the step by step photos of the restringing.  This is how it looks coming out of the box. Which may explain the fraying wires. (Well, that and the bunnies chewed through some of the wiring.)

This is how it looks assembled. Except this one has a broken antler bracket.  That's why it looks like he has a mane.  His antlers are laying against his neck.

I stripped off the white wire (this is a different deer). At first I was tediously following the wiring to unfasten it. Then I had an epiphany and realized there was no reason to preserve the wire. So I snipped it. Much, much easier to remove.

Because the wire I bought wasn't designed for wire sculptures, I had to string sections at a time, trying not to double the wire or ruin the outline of the sculpture.

In some areas of the structure, it was hard to decide the best direction to run the new wiring.  Liberal use of clothes pins allowed me to test layouts before zip tying.

After zip tying the bulbs, the reindeer looks more like a porcupine.

Here he is completed and looking much better with his antlers repaired.  I fastened the wiring in such a way that the deer can no longer be disassembled for the off season.  This should enable them to look better longer.   Granted, they take up more storage space.

Here is the tableau during the day. (And yes, the small deer in the foreground was done with different wire.  If I get ambitious, I will change him over.)

And here is the tableau at night.  Here the green wire is a non-issue.  And honestly, very few outdoor sculptures look good during the daytime.

I have one final stag to rewire.  I planned on getting them done early last year, but I procrastinated.  I did the 4 in the picture in the two weeks after Thanksgiving of last year.  The fifth spent the season in the garage.

I've promised myself I will finish the last deer next week.  I'm not sure I believe me.

Updated:  I did finish the last deer, but not until December, 2012.

Related:     Red nose for a white wire deer