Episode: 3787
Title: HPR3787: It shouldn't crackle like that
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3787/hpr3787.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 05:19:00

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,787 for Tuesday the 7th of February 2023.
Today's show is entitled, It shouldn't Crackle Like That.
It is hosted by Rowan, and is about 10 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is Rowan describes fixing the wiring to a ceramic Christmas tree.
Hi, welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
This is Rowan, and today I'll be giving you a short Christmas story.
So the Friday before Christmas, my partner's mother called me and asked if I had a short
indoor extension cord she could borrow.
When I arrived at her house, which takes all of about 30 seconds to get to, she lives
in the next town home down.
She showed me her display of ceramic Christmas trees for which she needed the extension
cord.
These decorations have two pieces, a base which holds a small light bulb, and then the tree
which sits over the light and has translucent colored plastic Christmas lights attached to
it, which are illuminated by the light bulb inside the tree.
There were four ceramic trees of bearing heights from about 14 inches, about 36 centimeters
to six inches, about 15 centimeters tall.
While helping to arrange each of the tree's electrical cords and plugging them into the
extension cable, one of the trees wouldn't stay lit.
If you turned the base or moved the cord, it would light back up, but then it would go
out once you took the pressure off the cord.
I could also hear crackling at times when moving the cord.
Not a sound you want to hear in an electrical ornament.
After separating the pieces and turning over the base, I could see not only the sparks,
but why it was sparking.
At some point, one of the wires had come loose from the light socket and was taped back into
place with what looks like duct tape.
The ornament was made in the 1950s.
I'm not sure when the repair was made, as Norman's been passed through the family over the
years.
Plastic which held the wire in place had failed over the years, and the tape was also failing
from the electric sparks that would occur when the wire was moved around.
You could see burn marks on the tape around the wire.
At first, I thought I might be able to fix the side with the bad wiring, maybe saw
under the wire into the socket to give it a good electrical connection, and then use
electrical tape to cover the hole where the socket casing had failed.
And in the process of taking the wire out and removing all the duct tape, the socket's
electrical contact fell out.
I'd say this was for the best.
The whole socket needed replacing.
My biggest issue is I wasn't sure I could find a replacement socket that would fit through
the hole in the ceramic base.
So while doing my last minute Christmas shopping the next day on Christmas Eve, I stopped
at one of the big box hardware stores to browse the electrical section and see if I could
find a replacement socket that might work.
Of course, I hadn't brought either the old socket or the light bulb, but I found a small
rack with replacement sockets that looked like it might work.
The cantalabra style socket replacement looked like the correct size for both the light
bulb and the hole in the base of the ornament.
Once I was home, I tested the fit of the light bulb and the socket was the correct size.
It was just a little too big for the hole in the base, the new light socket.
But I was hoping I could just grind off some of the raised plastic lettering and maybe
a little off the sides of the new socket here and there to get it to fit in the base.
I was leery of using my Dremel tool to make the hole bigger in the ceramic base.
I didn't want it to crack or chip the finish.
I did end up doing both, grinding down some of the plastic on the replacement socket and
grinding out the hole in the ceramic base.
At first, there was raised lettering on the side of the new socket.
I'd ground those down with the Dremel and then there were some places when I was trying
to fit it in where I felt like it was a little tight, so I was just trying to grind a
little off the side here and there.
I was getting close, but then I noticed that I was starting to get too much off of places
on the new socket and I didn't want to destroy it and compromise its integrity.
I did very carefully start grinding the hole, trying to make it a little more circular
in the ceramic.
I'd do a little bit and then I'd test it to see if the socket would go down through.
It finally did and then of course it wasn't a snug fit, so the socket would went down
in all the way.
The new socket sort of had this hexagagonal end on it, so that would keep it from sliding
all the way through the hole, which was good, but it also, the new socket had this piece
of aluminum.
It was sort of like an extender to keep the wires going straight out and keep the wires
from bending too close to the end of the plastic socket coming out the bottom of it.
When the new socket slid all the way down to the base, it was sort of sticking out the
bottom, so you wouldn't have been able to have the Christmas tree stand sit nice and
flat.
I didn't have to have it raised about a quarter inch, I'm not quite sure how many millimeters
that is.
I took a piece of electrical tape and I did end up putting an electrical tape on it.
I wrapped it around the new socket and then that provided enough tension and I sort of
could put the offset, the new candle obro socket in the base enough so that the wires didn't
stick out the bottom and it was very snug at that point.
I thought you could probably get away with just leaving it like that, but I also wanted
to make sure that that was better physically secured in there.
We have a glue gun somewhere in this house, I still haven't found it.
Usually our girls are not that great at putting things away, but I think I was the last one
to use the glue gun, so that's probably on me.
I did find a big bag of glue sticks, so that was beneficial.
What I did, I don't do this at home kids, a desodering gun, which is basically like a
very hot, very concentrated hair dryer and I figured if it would melt solder, it would
soften a glue stick.
I was able to carefully sort of press the glue stick at the edge where the candle obro
was coming through the base on inside and blow, on the low setting use the hot air desodder
to soften the glue and sort of push the glue stick around, but of course as you push
the glue stick it's getting closer into the base, which means my fingers are getting closer
into the very hot stream of air, and so it's only able to make it about three quarters
of the way around before it just was too hot to do, so I sort of pulled the glue stick
off and I let it cool just a little bit and then I just took my finger around and smoothed
the glue around the base of where the candle obro outlet goes through the base and actually
turned out looks pretty good and it definitely provided that extra stability to hold the socket
in the base.
The next step then was to connect the old cord, which the old cord was still in good shape
except right where it had gone into the old socket, so I cut that off the one side that
was still good and attached and then I evened it up and then stripped the ends for a new
connection and then the new socket had the two wires coming out of it with about six
inches of tail to give you room to mess with it and I had purchased two small of the screw
nuts connectors, so it is nicely screwed together, good electrical connection and you know
probably the recommended safe way of connecting to electrical cables cords and so that I had
already you know strung the old thing back through the hole on the side of the base,
wire nutted them together and it all fit back in under the base nicely, I was able to flip
the base over, plug it in, it lit up, put the top on it, sits nice and level and the tree
lights up and hopefully it will be good for another 50 years or so and not be a fire thread
when you plug it in, so anyway that was my exciting Christmas Eve, that sort of I guess
my Christmas Eve present to my soon to be mother-in-law and I hope you enjoyed this episode
of making Christmas a little safer.
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