Building LED lights

Piece of one half inch by eight or ten feet long plywood edge cap molding available at Home Depot, LOWES, ETC
Hot Glue Gun with Hot glue sticks.
Sharp Razor Blade Knife
Measuring Tape or Ruler
Small Standard Screw Driver
Small Pair Of Needle Nose Pliers
Appropriate size Drill Bit For LED LIGHTS
Cordless or Electric Drill Gun
Pencil or Grease Pencil
Thirty Watt Or Smaller Pencil Soldering Iron
Electronic Solder for Soldering
Twelve Volt Battery or Power Supply For Testing LED LIGHTS

[One To Three volts, Applies To Amber And Red, Check for Voltage On other colors.]

Variable Rated OHM RESISTORS
Length of 18 or 20 gauge STRANDED WIRE ONLY in Black and Red

Take a two inch piece of plywood edge cap. Measure and find center on length and width. Mark. Measure half inch on each side of centre mark. Drill appropriate size holes in centre and on each side of center and push LED LIGHT through it. There should be resistance pushing LED LIGHTS through holes. Led Lights have two wires coming out of them. Long one is POSITIVE, and SHORT ONE NEGATIVE. Tie all short ones together and all long ones together. If using one to three volts lights you have nine volts now. You need a standard 1/4 watt 300 OHM RESISTOR to lower the voltage to nine volts. You SAY put four three volts and it comes to 12 volts so no need of resistor? OK, TRY IT. DID YOU BURN OUT YOUR LIGHTS? SORRY ABOUT THAT. Never equal twelve volts. Solder your resistor to the POSITIVE side of your lights. Also solder all connections.

Your resistor can be soldered to your positive side of Led by either lead coming out of it. Try putting a set together just loosely on the work bench to see how it works before putting them in the case. LIGHT them up. If you burn one so who cares as you can put other one in. Cut all leads to stay in the case. Attach 18 to 20 gage wire [Black, Ground, RED, live] and attach to ground and live side. Solder them. Test before soldering output leads on. Push negative leads to one side and positive lead to the other side in the plastic case. Use hot glue to hold everything in place so they do not short out. Test again. If everything OK, Fill cavity over the leads with HOT GLUE. This will seal against moisture.

This will give you a three LIGHT cluster. If you want a six LIGHT Cluster cut a four inch piece of plastic plywood edge cap and do it the same way. Use two resisters for each set of three in the four inch cluster. If you want a five LIGHT cluster, do a three and a separate set of two using a 1/4 watt 430 OHM RESISTOR for the second gang of two LIGHTs. On the six and five cluster you can tie the live wires together after the resistors. The ground may all be tied together.

The lower the voltage the more LED LIGHTS you can use for the same RESISTOR VALUE. Try to find TWELVE VOLT LED LIGHTS AND YOU CAN CONNECT AS MANY TOGETHER WITHOUT USING RESISTORS. They are much more expensive. I pay twelve cents apiece for LED LIGHTS and three cents apiece for resistors, edge cap molding cost me one dollar and fifty cents. Approximately cost for LED LIGHTS IS ABOUT 2 or 3 dollars.

Any more info needed e-mail me. Roger[GYMPY] Delorme triker83@hotmail.com