I have two spools of 10 gauge wire that I picked up at a flea market 10 years or so ago. Each must have 100’ on it. Would it be total overkill to use as bus wire or would it be better put to some other purpose?
A lot of that will depend on the size of your layout. I used 10 ga wire as busses on my layout, as it’s 27’x29’.
The biggest downside will be soldering feeders to it. It takes lots of watts to heat up 10 ga to the point solder will melt.
I used 10 gauge bus (DC operation) on my last four layouts. It is not that expensive, and never has problems. I do not believe overkill is a bad thing. I do tend to overbuild everything.
It does take a high wattage iron. I have one just for that duty. My picture shows 14 gauge wire on a layout experiment segment.
-Kevin
Yes. I had the same issues.
And going the suitcase connector route will be problematic as well. Those connectors have a range of sizes for the larger wire and the smaller wire, and I think the smaller wire for the 10 gauge connector would be about 16 gauge, too large for feeders.
10 gauge is doable, and cost effective if you have some on hand, and the feeder connection issues aren’t all that bad.
Wishy washy advice. Sorry. [:$]
Robert
I used 12g because when I went to buy 14g at the industrial electric place the guy wanted to empty two massive spools and re-hang two new ones. I ended up getting 300’ of black and 300’ of green for a fraction of what he was going to charge me for the 14g. I would be fine with using 10g and I have had no problems soldering to 12g.
If you have it, I don’t see a major reason not to make use of it. The soldering problem is one negative factor, and so is the ease of shaping it and running it around corners of the layout. But at least once it’s shaped, that’s it. Voltage drop, on the other hand, will be minimal over dozens of feet.
Stranded or solid? 10GA solid will be a little stiff to work with. I use 10GA stranded on my layout because I have some fairly long bus runs.
I used the terminal strip shown below. Ran parallel #16 wire from one terminal strip to the next. Then used #20 gauge from the terminal strip to the track. No soldering except at the track. It would be great for #10 wire.
Wire already owned is never overkill.
Even if you only have a 15 foot bus run. If you had no wire on hand - buying #10 is overkill for that. But since you already HAVE the #10 - no sense not using it.
–Randy