I Can See Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Remember way back when I finished the frame of the table and then I finished the top, and then I coated the top? After all that I thought I was done and ready to start the hobby itself. All I had to do was unpack all of my boxes of stuff and get to work. WRONG!!

It turns out that there was some wiring under the table that I forgot to do before I put the top on. It was like a blind spot in my thinking. I couldn’t believe that I forgot to do it! I didn’t want to bore you with how I was doing it, but essentially I have a bunch of terminal blocks under the table. You can see them if you go back and check out my posts on building the table. I did that so I could tap into power from virtually any spot on the table without having to run a bunch of wire later.

I wanted to be able to tap into two kinds of power. The first would simply be power for any future lighting that I might use in my landscaping (buildings, signs, etc.). That would be a constant DC voltage. The second type of power that I wanted to tap into, the one that I forgot to distribute, was actually the most important. That would be the power from each racer via his handheld controller. I couldn’t believe I forgot that. And of course it’s a whole lot harder to do it under the table once the top is on. My shoulder joints aren’t what they used to be and getting down on the floor under a low table in the cold of winter was not something I looked forward to.

I plowed through it however, and thanks to a friend at work who generously bought a mechanic’s creeper for me, I was able to greatly speed up the last bits of the wiring. I only have one terminal block left to wire. After that all I have left to do is the connections between the two tables. If you remember from my table-building posts, I used a duplex outlet on one table and a grounded plug on the end of the wire from the other table. That way all I have to do is plug one table into the other. In my case it would be plugging the small table into the large table. Think of it like plugging one string of Christmas lights into another. There’s a plug at one end and a socket at the other. At the other end of the small table the wires terminate in their own duplex outlets. I did that just in case I build a third table. If I did, all I would have to do is plug the third table into second.

So my plan this week is to finally finish the catch-up posts on this blog and Saturday finish the last bits of the wiring. For anyone that doesn’t know, I was originally posting on Facebook. I posted the table building in its stages and the unboxing in its stages. What I’ve been trying to do (and taking way too long at it) is to re-post everything here and then move forward only on the blog with maybe just a Facebook post that is simply a link to my blog post.

Theoretically, after I finish the last of the wiring (hopefully next weekend), I can start working the hobby and make all new posts here that aren’t repeats of prior Facebook posts.

See you at the end of the tunnel!