cutting a string of lights

[RobDaddy]

Does anyone know if you can cut a string of lights to fit a certain distance around a window without burning out the bulbs. For instance you have a 25 foot string that you want to cut down to 5 feet. Being that there are fewer bulbs on the line with the same amount of power will it burn them out?

[Tim Fischer]

RobDaddy wrote:

Does anyone know if you can cut a string of lights to fit a certain distance around a window without burning out the bulbs. For instance you have a 25 foot string that you want to cut down to 5 feet. Being that there are fewer bulbs on the line with the same amount of power will it burn them out?

With minis or led's, the short and best answer is no. With C7/C9's, you can. With ropelight, you can, if you cut on limited cut points...

Theoretically you could cut minis if you put a power resistor in place, but that's not for the average person (including me) to try. It's best to black out the extra bulbs, and/or try other length strings (50's, 35's, and 20's are available, sometimes even 10's, although they might vary in brightness).

-Tim

[DavBro]

You can cut minis at certain points. A 120V mini light string have a total number of lights that is a multiple of either 50 or 35. So if you have a 150-light mini string, there will be 3 segments in it that can be cut apart. There are two ways to find these cut points:

1. 
   
2. Pull a bulb and see what lights go out. As long as they are all together on the string (sometimes removing a bulb will cause every other or every third bulb to go out, that is a twinkling string and you can't easily cut it), you can cut the string at the end of that segment and end up with a functional smaller string.
   
3. Carefully look at the wires between the bulbs. For the most part there will be 3 wires. Wherever there is a short, 2-wire segment between bulbs, that is the end of a segment.

Either way you do it, once you find the individual segments of series-wired bulbs, you can cut them, add a new plug, and have a smaller string. Take care to insulate the cut ends. This year I cut several 100 light sets into 50's for part of my display. It worked qute nicely.

Dave

[Bad-Magic]

Thanks for that reply Davbro helped me.

[roadrat]

There is a lazy way to make the string fit a window which works for me: I wrap it around the window frame twice.

To find the cut point of minis, look for the space where there are only two wires rather than three. It's quite easy to locate.