HOW TO MAKE A SUPER EXTENSION CORD! (Perfect for Christmas!)

hey gang it's paul with studpack welcome back to our channel jordan i were at one of our projects the other day we plugged our miter box into one of our favorite extension cords and we had no power turns out the female end on my favorite extension cord was bad in fact it was even arcing a little bit so i plugged it from the wall and i cut that end off basically condemning the cord so i wouldn't pick it up and use it again but this is one of my favorite extension cords it actually belonged to my dad and this thing is 12 gauge wire those things are hard to find and i didn't want to throw this in a trash heat so in this video we're going to take this old extension cord and turn it into a super extension cord we're going to make it better and safer and you'll never throw away another extension cord again let's get into it so one option we're going to show you it's not the option we're going to use but we wanted to show you because it's good to know about you've all passed these in the home centers or the hardware stores it's a replacement plug obviously come in male and female and this is a clam shell type design which is really great because you're not gonna lose all the parts back in the day these used to be in two parts you slide one part on the cord wire it up bring this part back screw it all together and i can't tell you how many times i forgot to put that part on the cord first had to take it all apart but uh that's just the way it is so a couple things you gotta know about this thing number one is the wiring most devices are gonna come with a strip gauge and that tells you how much wire to strip to put it in this hole so it's deep enough on this one it's hard to see but it's on this clear plastic you put the wire in that hole and when you tighten down the screw there's a clamping plate that comes down and clamps on the wire there's no need to wrap it around the screw even if you tried you couldn't do it on here you put it inside tighten the screw black wire on the gold green on the ground white neutral on the silver another important thing about these is the grip range on this end if you have a thin cord you would put it in just like that but if you had a thicker cord like these these are actually removable for a thicker cord see how that works so that's important to note you wouldn't want to leave these in and clamp down on a thick cord and possibly damage it but that's only good to plug one thing in we got our table saw our miter saw vacuum cleaners everything's electric these days jordan's trying to charge a camera plug in our lights to video we need more plugs so we're gonna use a double gang box put in a ground fault and a duplex receptacle and have four plugs to plug stuff into it's gonna be awesome let's get started so before we start wiring up our supercord why do extension cords fail so much they get a lot of abuse at the job site they get stepped on stuff and your truck rolls on and what do we all do we grab it right here and yank it out of the wall because we're not walking 15 feet to grab it by these little finger moles right here where you can nicely pull it out yeah who does that who does that so what's the answer to our problem let me introduce you to a strain relief now this strain relief is really the star of this video why well most people when they repurpose an extension cord to a junction box like we're talking about they just pick up a connector like that at the home center because really it's all they can find so they wire their core through there they bring it to the job site rolling around in their truck for a few weeks it's getting stepped on pulled around and you've all seen it before what happens the outer jacket of this starts to break right there because this thing's getting yanked hard and that's why this strain relief is so important so let's stop talking about that strain relief and show you how it works now like many things i use i got this from mcmaster carr valuable resource mcmaster.com we'll put it in the screen below but there were two requirements i needed i needed one end the end that goes in the box to be half inch knockout that's right here and then this end needed to be the appropriate size for this cord they have multiple sizes obviously you wouldn't want to put a really small cord in there and if you got a fat cord it's not going to fit so you got to get the right one so i just got out my trusty dial caliper measured the cord and i was able to order the right strain relief now if you don't have dial calipers number one you really need to get some but if you don't have any you can use a drill index and find the hole the wire fits in and that's going to be pretty close it's going to get you there so now our first step we're going to take off the locking nut put it right in our half inch knockout we'll tighten that and it's simply going to be that easy we're going to strip this cable and put it in there and tighten this but first let's show you how this end works and clamps down on that cable now get in here close gang here's the fitting on the box and the cord goes right through the middle and as you can see there's a rubber insert in there that grips on the cord and outside of that rubber insert are all these little fingers see how flexible they are now inside of here it's cone-shaped so when i put that on there that cone shape is going to engage these fingers and tighten them equally with even pressure all the way around and when i put this on there and just make it finger tight i can't even move it check this out slide it in that's just finger tight right there and look i can't pull it we'll get a little bit of turn on there with some pliers it's never coming out so let's take it apart strip this as much as we need it and get this thing put together all right gang stripping the outer jacket from that extension cord from so cord this is how i was taught you bend it like this a new blade in your utility knife well that's not really new maybe we should change it but we've got a new blade in our utility knife and i've just got my end of the extension cord looped over like that not too tight i'm just going to come over right here and i'm not even really cutting i'm just letting the blade press in there the goal is to not damage the insulation around the inner conductors so i can see that i'm through right there see that and i'm just going to come over here on this side and press and cut till it opens like that see that so i'm not sawing and cutting the wire inside i'm just pressing gently and cutting the outer insulation then i'm going to turn it like that see how it's opened up right there i'm just going to continue going around i'm just going to press and because i'm bending the wire it's just going to split open like that we're going to go all the way around and remove this orange jacket we've got a little piece up there we go boom and that's how i do that so i don't damage this insulation it's very important all right let's cut off this paper and go on to our next step all right let's tighten this before we go any further and then we'll put our cord through there crescent wrench right there open those up a little bigger i'm going to tighten that nut i'll slide this on our cord into our fitting on the box and we're going to pull it so we just have a little bit of orange showing right there that's all we need now let's tighten this and then there's a couple things i want to talk about about this style of box and then also about the mud ring we're gonna use it's not really a mud ring it's more of a cover plate all right dude that is there it is ready for one of the stud pack job sites all right let's talk about this box before we go any further this is called a drawn box in other words a piece of sheet metal is over a mold and it is pressed so you have nice smooth edges all the way around so that's not going to get caught up on anything at your job site if you're dragging it across the floor it's not going to scratch the floor as opposed to a welded box if you go to the home center or hardware store you'll see the difference you can see welds on a welded box and they are all square sharp corners these are drawn now let's talk about our cover plate you've seen us talk about mud rings before you could do that and you could put your two devices there and put on a big cover plate but that cover plate is going to have square edges and it's going to get hooked on everything so a much better option is a plate like this no cover plate needed that is the cover plate and again see how everything's nice and smooth the screws are going to be protected so that's we're going to use and we found this one because we're going to use a ground fault here and a duplex receptacle there so let's get this thing wired up and then i think i want to talk about all these holes in this plate and what they're for all right we always start on the ground wire so i'm going to use some 12 gauge ground from this romex just have some scraps right here i'm going to use my strippers push it out on one end then i can grab it boom there we go very expensive piece of ground wire this 12 2 is out of sight right now i need one more there we go i'm going to take this shorter one get the hole in the stripper and put a loop in it just like that and that's going to be what we use to bond it to the box so the box doesn't come with this ground screw but you see that hump right there that's called a raised ground or a ground hump all the manufacturers did was use one of the five knockouts in the back of the box use that corner to put that hump there so before that was there the ground screws used to stick out of the box like that and i can't tell you how many times i've had to drill a piece of steel or block or brick or concrete or even wood when we're surface mounting these boxes to account for that ground screw so the ground hump or the raised ground is a great improvement i'm going to put that back let's wrap this around there and tighten that screw and finish putting these grounds together [Music] now we've got our grounds all connected but why do i have two jumpers right here because i have the ground fault for one of them and the other side is going to be for the other ground screw so let's strip these black and the white right here and start wiring this thing up we're almost done remember we were talking about a strip gauge before on this device on this ground fault it's right there boom perfect and there's our neutral ready to go now here's an easy way to remember where your incoming power goes on a ground fault your 120 volts in incoming power is your line the i n in line just remember that's incoming and the owen load is outgoing that's going to protect anything downstream so since this is our cord from the wall from our power we're going to put the black right here on the gold screw the white on that side and then we'll continue on [Music] even on the grounding screw there's a clamping plate see this little guy right here the wire just goes right under it like that i see a lot of times where guys will wrap it around that screw which is fine i guess but you got the clamping plate that's how the manufacturer intended it so let's go ahead and use it [Music] now we've got our gfi powered from the extension cord when we plug it into the wall but we need to get power to the other plug and make sure it's ground fault protected so we're going to come off the load side of the ground fault to our receptacle here and get this one done now let's talk about this receptacle real quick i had a couple in my bin that i could use and check the back of those which one do you think is stronger this one or this one well what i notice is the yoke this metal strap right here is the yoke on this receptacle it wraps around the back making this one very strong but on this one it goes through the middle and i'm sure it's punched out for all these holes and openings in the device so to me it's not as strong so i'm going to use that one let's get this one hooked up and we're about ready for our cover plate [Music] all right we're almost there again and we want everybody nice and comfy in the box these grounds are taking up a lot of room and all i really need here is to go from there to there so i'm going to cut them short i don't need a loop or anything if i ever have to work on them you just take them out like this and you got plenty of access let me cut them over here and get this thing finished [Music] [Music] okay gang before we put the cover on this thing i know i'm gonna get a lot of comments about wrapping these with electrical tape and here's why you do this it prevents any chance that you'll get any arcing or contact between the screws and the metal box i've even seen that done when these are put in a plastic box and that serves no purpose but if i were to put this in a metal box in a residence i would certainly wrap that with electrical tape i'm not going to do it here because if i ever have to work on this thing number one it's going to be unplugged from the wall so there's not going to be any power here and number two even though it doesn't look like it i have a lot of room here especially with this mud ring so let's put this thing together and see how it works now let's put on our cover plate now if i call this a mud ring earlier i apologize that's a mud ring that's a cover plate so remember i said earlier what are all these holes for well the holes are to mount the devices to the mud ring and then the mud ring oh i just did it and then the whole assembly gets attached to the box with these screws right here through those holes but check this out they don't fit they don't go flush but zoom in close here and you see all these ears right here they're called drywall ears or plaster ears they have a couple different names but can you see these little score marks right here and on over on this one they're right here they're designed to break off just for situations like this so i'm going to get my alignment pliers i'm going to break off those ears and then you're going to see how nicely this device fits on that cover plate all right i've removed all the ears but we have an issue with the ground fault it still won't fit but check it out if i flip it over you can see on the back there's another score line so i have to snap off that little piece i'm just going to use my lymans go right up to it bend back and forth it breaks right off all right let's see if it fits we got all the ears broken off there we go i can tell we're going to be fine look how cool that's going to be now don't give me a hard time that i got what an ivory one or is that almond it's so hard to tell these days and i got a white one but that's what i had in my box so that's what i'm using these holes haven't always been there they've been there a long time but it used to be that the only way you fastened this device to this kind of cover plate was the middle screw and you can imagine that when you plug something in that thing's going to start to flex because there was nothing holding it up here and if it flexes that's bad so the guy that taught me that i trained with the master electrician he was actually drilling these out and putting a screw there before the code changed now that was great he was making it better but he was actually modifying a listed device so what do the electricians out there think was it good for him to modify a listed device to make it safer or should he have left it alone i can remember him doing that now a lot of times these boxes will come with the screws this one i don't remember i think it did i can't find them but i've got some number 632 here and some nuts that's what we're going to use and a lot of times you'll actually see where as part of the forming process there's a little tab of metal right here that's tap and that is your nut if you've ever wondered what that was for so now i've thoroughly exhausted that subject let's put this together [Music] all right gang it's looking great can't wait to use this at a job site now i got one more hole right there do i need to put a screw in there you bet i do so i have this long one but do i need to cut it actually with this receptacle i do not can you see that through hole right there it's plenty deep enough for this screw if i use the receptacle like this i would have to cut it so let me zip this in there and put in our last two screws in the box and plug this thing in see if it works [Music] cool look how awesome that looks and this thing is pretty heavy it could kind of you know double as maybe a self-defense weapon or something huh swinging around like that oh man i almost hit myself but that's gonna be awesome at the job site put that right by our table saw plug in our sawstop miter saw best tool vacuum whatever we got and the beauty or ground fault protected let's plug it in see if it works man and it's heavy it doesn't move can you plug something in perfect right on cool dude we saved another extension cord from ending up in the landfill and i can't wait to use this at a job site and we're going to save other extension cords too because we can just drop right down here plug in i can't wait but you know my voice is wearing out i can tell i've been talking a lot on this video but that's okay here at studpack we not only like to show you how we do something but why we do something and sometimes we go even deeper and show you all the whys behind the why's and the history behind electrical stuff like this so if you enjoy that kind of content make sure you let us know by hitting that like button subscribe if you haven't already and we will see you on our next video [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Stud Pack

Views: 798,194

Rating: 4.9317384 out of 5

Keywords: StudPack, Extension cord, Extension cord repair, Extension cord fix, Super cord, DIY, Christmas Cord

Id: EseFbug7cMg

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021