Just when you think it’s safe to go back in the water…
I epoxied the floor to the struture with no difficulty. My clamping scheme was okay. While it was curing I built the power board.
I’ve gotten this build-a-power-board process done to a science.
I’m using these cute little modular terminal blocks. They have a tiny v-shaped rail that slides into a similarly shaped slot to add as many as you need. They solder into the circuit board. For the positive terminal I have each block isolated and solder jumpers to each contact. For the negative blocks I solder them to a bus made from adhesive copper foil.
After inserting and soldering the blocks, I added the CL2N3 LED driver chips. These inexpensive marvels take in 5-90 VDC and output 20ma which is loved by LEDs. They can service as many in series as your power supply can allow. Each LED drops 3.3 volts, so with a 12 VDC power supply you can power 3 LEDs in series. CL2s do not like parallel circuits. If you parallel LEDs one leg receives no power. I figured I would need five separate circuits for the building and another for the street light and the illuminating the barber pole.
The CL2s have three leads. One is input, one output and the middle is just for support in soldering to the board. There is a flat side. When looking at the flat side, the lead on the left is input.
Here’s a few shots of the board bottom. The input leads all are soldering to the 12 VDC bus. The middle leads are crimped over and soldered for strength. The output leads are left facing straight out so the output leads can be soldered to them individually.
The topside shows the CL2s all facing in the correct direction.The output. bus terminals are in the foreground. The terminals to the right are the ground terminals.
I tested all the circuits and they were live. I installed a toggle switch just for fun.
After curing the front corner of the floor was sitting proud of the wall. I tried to sand it down with my multi-tool, but while being horrendously noisy, didn’t have a sanding head that was coarse enough to make a difference.
Then I got the “brilliant” idea to “carefully” hold the bottom onto the belt sander and just take off the high spot. Note the words in quotes. This worked in removing the stock. However, it also work in destroying the wiring that was coming out of the barrel store. Not only did it instantly chew off the insulation, but it proceded to destroy the conductors on two of the wires; one positive and one negative. This image was taken after I removed the other part of the leads. Since I only had two LEDs on the first floor and one on the second, I was planning on making them in series so I salvaged the two leads of the two separate sets and soldered them together.
I added some shrink tubing to insulate. After attempting to power it up, it failed. I then found that the existing ground wire, which I thought just lose some insulation, was in fact, a failed wire. I spliced more black lead to it. And tested again.
Then I found this!
The strain on the wiring actually tore the lead off the solder pad on the copper foil. This is effectively “in a closet” and was unreachable. I couldn’t fix the second floor so I wrote it off. One apartment will not be lit and that’s not too far fetched. But I had to light the store. The only option left was to bypass all the previous wiring and run some new lines. Bypass surgery so to speak.
I had to scrape the paint off the copper foil to make it solderable, and the reach into the room to tin the new spots. Then I had to solder leads in there also. Lighting was poor and working room non-existent. However persistence paid off. It ain’t pretty, but I got power to the lighting.
I routed the wiring to the wall, drilled a new hole in the floor to pass the wires below and used some Bondic to help hold them in place.
While you can see the wires from this angle, I’m expecting that with the store fronts in place, much of that will be blocked, or at least, not so obvious. Notice the broken post on the store front. That’s been broked and repaired more than once. I pops togeether nicely and will be okay when the building is complete.
And one person wins the “eagle eye rivet counter award” in noting that on my side, the store is called “Ye Olde Oaken Barrel”, but when I did the signage in the window called it “Ye Olde Barrel Shoppe”. Take your pick…
While I was hoping to get the building buttoned up in this session, but, as usual, I spent as much time going backwards and going forwards. I can’t complain. It’s my hobby and nobody’s forcing me to do it.








































































