MAKE Electronics: Experiment 12

Joining 2 wires together:

I have already soldered quite a bit prior to this so it was more a chance to hone my skills than learning anything new, however I had never soldered low gauge wire, so this was a new experience for me, larger diameters do need more power and my Weller could just about handle the wire in the power chord, I'm not sure how I'd feel about using a 'soldering gun' they look rather unwieldy, I do have a low quality Weller hobby one in the garage which I might have a bash using at some point in the future.

The first 2 solder joints, the first joint joined the wires across each other in an 'x' shape, this went well. The second joint joined the wires parallel to each other, again, this proved to be successful, I heat shrinked the wires and was fairly happy with my hand work.

Next I chopped up a long power chord and made it much shorter, I joined each individual wire and heat shrinked all 3 individually, then used some electrical tape on the outside of this as I didn't have a larger enough diameter of heat shrink to use for this purpose. I tested this cable out on my soldering iron, it worked flawlessly, I was somewhat hesitant as I thought I might end up tripping the breakers with a short circuit - this did not happen fortunately!