Cutting rope lights

[kjam22]

I need some help!  I bought some 18 foot rope lights at walmart last year with the hopes of using them to build the star for my mega tree.  I am confused on where to cut these though, I know some of the "spool" lights have cut lines but these do not.  Anyone know where I should go about cutting these?  Also, I thought I read somewhere that you could use old power cords instead of buying the kits when you wire the cut strings.  Any help on this woudl be appreciated.

[tbone321]

The "spool" lights that you are referring to were set up with that in mind.  They have the cut lines printed on the casing and the splice points at those areas are set up to receive the end caps used to supply power.  The lights that you bought at Walmart were not designed to be cut.  While they are similar in their internal wiring, they don't have any splice points within the string and could prove to be very difficult to get power supplied to the cut end. 

You would probably need to use use "old power cords" here because I doubt that the termiator kits would work with these rope lights.  The problem is that this is probably going to result in a sloppy not well insulated connection.  Since you will be working with 120V, I suggest that you do it the right way and get the right strings and terminators.  If you really want to do this then you need to count the lights in the string (inside the rope casing).  When you get a number, post it and we will take a shot at it but unless the box tells you what the voltage of the lights inside the casing are, all we can do is take a guess.

[rmp2917]

Most rope light has multiple sections of bulbs all wired in series. A typical length for 2 wire rope light is 18 inches meaning the lights can be cut every 18 inches. You will need to determine what the length is for your lights. If you look at the attached drawing you can see that there are two larger wires that run the full length of the rope. Then, there are tiny wires in the center that connect the bulbs in series. Between each section there is a space that does not have any tiny wires in the middle. This is where you want to cut the rope lights. Make sure not to cut the small wires when making your cuts. If the rope is not clear enough to see the bulbs and wires inside, it will be very difficult to find the correct place to cut.

As tbone said this can result in a very sloppy connection if not done correctly.

Here is a link to Planet Christmas that has more info on cutting and rewiring the cut sections.
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