The Ultimate $150 Shop Accessory - ALPHA CORD

welcome back friends to the shop man have i got a good project for you guys today fresh back from platte electric one of my favorite stores you guys always you guys should probably know by now that i'm a closet electrician or i i wish i would have been wish i would have been one as much electrical work as i like doing i'm gonna share with you one of my favorite things i've ever built for the shop i built one of these years ago and i absolutely love it and it's a it's a basically it's a no compromise power distribution cord that's that's what we'll call it or a no compromise extension cord that will last you the rest of your life but we're actually going to take this this idea that i did years ago and we're going to drag it into the 21st century by adding usb support when i said no compromise i meant it this is all u.s rubber and american steel for the most part so extension cords we all have them we all use them right it's hard to find a good one the last few that i've bought have been absolute garbage they're thin uh they have low quality ends that wear out really quickly pretty soon you know you're you're putting your things in there not making connection i mean they're just they're hard to wrap up they don't coil well because they use a cheap vinyl on and on and on and they're just so thin they're so thin i mean you can buy good extension cords but most people don't you're gonna have to pay for them and you know a good extension cord even a 50 footer is going to run you about 100 or so so for about 50 dollars more than that 100 and a half or so you can build one that is going to be just amazing from the best ingredients right and the whole thing where you got to start is you got to have the right cable and man this is my this stuff gives me the fizz i don't even know what it's called but it's it's it's really similar to the to the black stuff you see on your welding leads right and you ever noticed how supple it is how it doesn't really get stiff in cold weather it coils just beautifully when you when you throw it out it lays it goes over bumps i mean it's just delightful delightful stuff the downside is is it's expensive this is what you're going to see like on really high-end power tools you'll see this from milwaukee where your cheap tools will have that garbage vinyl instead of the nice rubber so i think it's worth the investment now this is 50 feet of 10 3 cable when you see that number when you see your wire numbers you'll see a 10 and then a slash and a 3. that's telling you two things the 10 is the size that means that there's a 10 wire in there that's the size of the copper or the aluminum wire just for example just for your own fun the the extension cord that you're going to get in most this would be a good one this is a number 12 wire but the cheaper ones like you're going to find at walmart and stuff that's probably even going to be a number 14 wire right very very thin here just for example so this is a 14 wire and as the number gets smaller the wire gets bigger this is a number six wire right there and this is a zero or an ott right there giving ideas so just some of the some of the different sizes when you see the three number in there that tells you that there are three separate wires inside the sheathing so we can see right there there are three there's a white a green and a black so when you're building your extension cord that what size do you want well a 12 you can you can save a lot of money by buying this in a 12 or even uh but if you want to buy a 10 like this is which is really heavy it gives you more versatility because you could use this as a welding lead you could use this as a 240 lead so it's worth the extra few bucks to go with the bigger wire for a shop cord if you don't mind lugging around the extra weight in size i would go ahead and do it you'll forget the 30 bucks you saved with the smaller wire when you have that versatility so that's what we're going to go with this is a big heavy cable that's going to do really really well 50 feet 100 feet cords are too long they're unhandy they're miserable they're the devil to wrap and i just wouldn't have one whenever i have one i cut it in half and put ends on it because it's just unmanageable now when you're picking out your box make sure when you're looking for this in addition to the round edges make sure it's got this bump in it you see that right there that's always a problem when you're mounting these things and back in the day they were flat because you have a ground screw that's going to go through here and it used to stick out the other side and be a big hindrance and it doesn't sit flat it's just it's nasty so make sure you get one of these it has that bump in there that compensates for that ground screw right okay also where are we coming in if we look at these we have these are but dad used to call these things slugs we got half inch and three quarter or three quarter in one i'm not sure which is which we have a big strain reliever here right so this guy is going to be he's going to take the big one right and we want it right in the center we don't want it on the side we want it on the center right there so you can see these are oriented in different ways just for that very reason so we'll take and knock our slug out and then our strain reliever is going to go in like this right here all right very simple this electrical stuff you just got to follow the rules man it's not not complicated we have a black a white and a green right our black is always hot right so this should be in your tool kit you need one of these a little stripper this should be in every professional homeowner's kit if you guys want let me know in the comments i'll go over my basic kit here that will do just about everything now the number 12 wire sometimes these things have little holes you can fit in the back this is actually a really nice one here there's also strip gauges on these things right here so if you look on the back it'll tell you and i don't can't see very well green orange it'll tell you how far to strip it i don't know anyone actually uses that but uh but that's that's the way it goes so you're gonna have black and you're gonna have silver right there you see you've got got silver and gold excuse not not i don't mean black gold is always hot uh in um at least in this state right here so i always remember it by black gold black always goes to gold right so we're going to put about a six inch piece of that number 12 wire on there it's solid copper wire there and then over here on the silver side you're going to put a white piece and even if this is going to be true for all of your you know plugs that aren't gfi just your standard plugs this is going to be the way that they're configured just make sure do you see have a little bit of copper sticking out right there if you want to get super anal you can trim that off also as a fun fact here i'll just show you and i didn't know this until a long time ago i used to uh i used to grab the end of these and twist these into a hook like this right and you'd hook it over the screw you know sometimes that's the way you have to do it well i recently learned that this hole is what this hole is for right here i think i think that's what it's for it seems to make the perfect bend if you just go into that hole it gives you that perfect bend that goes right around and clamps into those but with this style we don't really need that now this is the important part if you're going to do this style make sure that you the bend goes to the right you see how i did that now the reason why that's important is that once you put that in there you can take your little nippers here and fold that around so you have a so it's really on there and the reason why the fish hook goes to the right is that would you tighten this now it acts to tighten it and to close the fish hook rather than open it the other way and now our plug basically is almost made up that's almost half of it right there okay now these two are connected right white to white white to silver black to gold i understand there's cleaner easier ways to do these with copper ferrules and two into one and all that but you know as a professional homeowner we don't always go about following the rules first things first see these little wings right here and applications into metal boxes like this these are there's a cut in there these are designed you can just bend them and they'll snap off or just cut them these are designed to be removed grandad when i was going through his old box boxes for you know bolts and parts and stuff he had saved these things and had used them for washers that's uh man that's taking frugality to a whole new level there i'd say just like in our box we get our three wires here right we've got our same even the same colors now our chinese finger trap probably should have fed this through before huh boy these things really hold you can literally hang this box from a light fixture or anything from ceiling the ceiling with this yeah don't uh don't do what i did there it's kind of a small hole there bolt these on to the switch plate cover oh man this is giving me the fizz look at that look at that we're going to talk a little bit about application now that is oh that is nice i look up i've got to tighten my jam nut there where's my regular so to tighten those jam nuts that's just you just use a screwdriver just push it on there just a little nut there that will tighten against that inside that's good now that is a proper extension cord head there that could be that'll last you a lifetime look at that isn't that nice man you guys it's you know i don't know what what it is about these things but it's just something about it having four plugs at the end of it that are good quality plugs is so nice that you can plug into without having to grab it with two hands you know it's just handy having that one-handed plug everything's all it's always oriented up when it's on the ground so you can always get it at it and plus you you know you're not stuck with one how many times did you get multiple cords out or try to find the you know a triplet end uh that's always you know some one more thing to keep track of but that there is nice okay let's real quickly put the other end in then we'll test it and talk about its use here these guys are simple it's pretty much the same and then what do we have here we got the silver which is the white our neutral and finally our black which is our hot which goes to gold friends we have ran into a bit of a snag because i uh well because i don't plan things out very well this uh doesn't fit [Laughter] strain reliever but i got to looking at it and it almost looks like whoever designed this may have accounted for uh professional homeowners that that is easily removable look at that right there let's take it over to the grinder knock that down a little bit maintain that nice arch and then we'll have a nice perfectly designed strain reliever it almost looks like it could look at that [Laughter] oh it's the little things right now we're cooking now we have now we got plenty of plenty of area i wonder why that was there that's clever huh all right let's test our mega cord out here make sure that we did everything right looks good i don't know if a guy is going to use this all the time but i mean contractors you mean you live and die by your phone you got to have it charged and it's just just an added benefit you know convenience uh that you're because you're always going to have a power cord out that you can plug into without a power brick on it right there and of course we're charging there you could charge you know most everything i'd like to see these things eventually come out with a usbc so if you could have a regular usb and maybe a usbc in there that would be really the ticket so why why go to all the trouble when you could just buy a normal extension cord well all of the reasons why that i explained earlier uh but you know one thing with shops and gra a lot of you guys are working out of garages goodness i've even been in times of my life where i was living in apartment where i couldn't didn't have a garage or shop and i rented a storage unit uh and i painted a car in a storage unit one time and did all the auto body you know i worked in there but i remember that one that there was no electrical in there uh except for one light bulb up in there and i got one of those adapters and plugged my extension cord up in there and i had something similar to this and i had a four ganger uh and i was able to to to work in there so if you have a situation like that or an older house with a smaller garage and you don't want to go to the aggravation of wiring the whole thing or maybe you don't use it all that time you can make up something like this and set it on your bench and now you got four plugs now just because you've got four plugs and big fat cable does not doesn't mean that you're going to be able to run you know everything off of it you're still limited by the circuit breaker which is going to be you know 15 20 amps most likely but it just gives you the ability usually if you're working by yourself like i do you might have a jigsaw and a skill saw uh and you're not using things at the same time right so this is this is for for the professional homeowner here not for the contractor gonna have multiple guys on one chord it's not going to do that right but it just gives you an option or you may decide you want to hang it right and you've got one plug or the plug's not in a convenient spot to where your workbench is there's no reason why you can't you know hang this up from a rafter and have that hang down and have it access or even better yet guy might even take a i thought what a great idea is if you get like a really powerful rare earth magnet mount that on the back now you can clunk it on the side of your toolbox or anything metal just an added kind of an added convenience and and it's going to pick up all of the metal shavings and every time you yeah maybe that's not a good idea having the magnet on there but that's it that is the that is the professional grade homeowner professional homeowner grade mega extension cord uh power adapter usb plugger that's it thanks for watching may god bless you and your families please keep us in your prayers and we'll see you guys on the next video

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 187,811

Rating: 4.8832855 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: -JHUPVJb4jQ

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021

Reddit Comments

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This whole video was a mess. He used 10/3 SOOW cord that has a 30 amp rating with 2 consumer grade receptacles that are NEMA 5-15 which are limited to 15 amps all fed by a NEMA 5-15P which can only connect to a 15 amp receptacle.