11-21-2011, 11:52 AM
Justin, I use solid wire from Romex cable for house wiring for main buss wires. Romex is cheap, and if there is a construction project near by, check to see if the electricians can give you any left over cut offs. If you have to buy Romex, it is sold by the foot and probably 12 feet would be plenty to wire your entire project. You can get it in the electrical section of any home center or hardware store. The other advantage of Romex is that the wires are easily pulled out of the sheathing, and it is color coded with a black wire, a white wire, and a bare copper wire. You can asign black for "+" and white for "-" and keep your wiring from having shorts. Run two wires down the center of your board, and then solder drops to the rails and install them with suitcase connectors. You could try soldering a drop to every rail joiner; but as you have discovered, rail joiners will get loose and cause problems. It is better to solder to either the outside of the rail or the bottom of the rail. If you have a track that is more than 6 inches away from the main buss, wrap & solder a pair of branch wires in effect mimicking your layout plan on the bottom of the bench work. Make you drops 8 inches long, and you can cut them close to the buss wires to reposition the tracks if they are soldered to the buss, or undo the suitcase connectors to move the tracks. Suitcase connectors are also cheap, so I would not reuse them. Buy a box of 100 and throw away used ones if you need to move your drop wires around.