electrical wire

[gary jackson]

what kind of wire for like coil /tach

[Bob Warfield]

Gary I'm no expert by a long shot but almost all the wiring I see looks way out of scale to me. I've been using my wife's sewing thread. It looks much better to my old eyes.

Bob 

[NOBLNG]

I haven’t done any wiring beyond plug wires and a few battery cables, so I’m no expert either. I did buy this 28 guage stuff at Michaels for such things….but haven’t used it yet.

Edited May 26, 2022 by NOBLNG

[gary jackson]

thanks guys   i remember in the 60s we used sewing thread for wiring   i used to wax it so it wouldnt look hairy lol

[peteski]

The answer is: depends on what scale the model is (since people on the forum build models from 1:6 to 1:160 scale), and how accurate you want the size to be.

You didn't mention scale.  Either way, you first find out the diameter of the wire you want to represent (not the actual metal conductor, but the outside diameter of the insulation) then divide it by your model's scale.  For example if the insulation diameter of the 1:1 scale wire is 1/16" (or 0.0625") and your model is 1:25 scale then the scale diameter will be 0.0625" / 25 = 0.0025".  That is quite thin - about the same diameter as human hair.

I seem to recall that there is a thread on this website that has reference sizes for wires of various diameters in various scales.

[Bob Warfield]

1 hour ago, gary jackson said:

 i used to wax it so it wouldnt look hairy lol

I never thought of that, good idea!

Bob

[Straightliner59]

Detail Master has .008" detailing wire in several colors. It's about as good as anything, if a tad large. .004"-.005" would be closer. I have some old armatures around here that have pretty close to that. I've used it, before, but paint doesn't really like to stick to it, and, once you've added that extra thickness, you may as well be using the Detail Master stuff!? Attached is a photo of the DM wire, used as a mag kill wire. I guess it's not an issue, since the coil wire is disconnected!