Oh my goodness this has been a record breaking week here at Justin the Handyman. I have been runnin’ and gunnin’ every day, but I came across something that I felt merited a blog post. This is an electrical issue known as the Underwriter’s Knot.
So I had client present with a saggy baggy lamp socket:
Now I like to emphasize that I am NOT an electrician, but it is an oddity of life that most master electricians will not bother with re wiring lamps, so it comes to folks like me to fix them. I am always amazed at lamp sockets– all that stands between your hand and a fully energized 110 volt bare wire is a little sleeve of cardboard about 1/16″ of an inch thick. That’s IT. Scary.
So anyway, this lady had had some lamp shop re-wire this thing, so you would THINK they would know how to do it. But when I popped off the old socket, UH OH
There was no UNDERWRITER’S KNOT.
The idea here is, if someone trips on the lamp cord, that MIGHT pull the wire out of the socket and now you have bare energized wires touching the metal of the socket base, or maybe even falling out of the lamp altogether. so when rewiring a lamp you ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS tie a special “Underwriter’s Knot” in the wire, thus:
This makes it pretty much impossible that the wire will get yanked off the screws on the socket.
I had other problems with this thing, the previous re-wire being an amateurish job I had to triple check to see which wire was the “hot” as the hot wire MUST go to the gold screw, otherwise more risk of shock. (Sorry no pic of done socket, this lady had a “list” a mile long and I was going and going.)
Rewiring lamps seems simple but it’s serious business. VERY easy to screw it up and create a shock hazard.
