Gunnel Lighting project

[glen e]

This has been covered a few times before but I figured I’d update the project with a few new pictures. About 3 1/2 years ago I ran strings of superbrightleds.com string lights under my gunnels and had good luck with them. They worked fine for all that time with no LED’s going out. They were a bit on the dim side as the string was only 6 lights long. However some time ago, a wise soul (I think Elusive) suggested all these strings should be fused and mine were not. So it was upgrade time. After mounting new Blue seas fuse blocks accessible for all dash power supplies, I decided to investigate new rope lighting and found, as usual, Jim at BOE marine to be a great help and have great prices on IMTRA rope lighting. Each side was like 20 bucks or so. This is a high quality product with all LED’s in a plastic tube for protection and super simple to install.

You can run this tubing with plastic clips that demand a small screw to affix it to the wall. I don’t like holes that are not necessary so I decided on 2 sided tape and zip tie bases – but with a twist. The zip tie bases need a strong 2 sided tape so it is necessary to strip the bases of the supplied foam tape and replace with Scotch Outdoor mounting tape. Strip the foam tape, alcohol swap the base and apply the Scotch product. This stuff will last 5 years at least if both surfaces are clean when it stets up, but can be taken off with a plastic putty knife if necessary:


After prepping the bases, I washed the wall down with spray cleaner and then a liberal coat of alcohol for a good prep. It’s as easy as sticking them up every 5 inches and wiring to the lights that were there. As said above, they now go thru a 3 amp fuse and then the dash:



These lights are BRIGHT, but they really make the back deck glow without destroying night vision. If they are too bright for you, just cut the tubing down and put in a smaller length. Mine ran all the way down the side. The beauty of this project is with all the heat shrinking of connectors and everything, it’s a 30 minute job on each side. No sweat, literally.



Jim's site has them here:
3/8" LED Rope Lighting, 12V, Warm White :: LED ROPE LIGHTING :: LIGHTING :: BOE Marine

[BenL]

Great write up and pics, it all looks great. I had never either those zip tie bases before or the 3M outdoor mounting tape. I've been considering the rope lights for some time now, might just be my next project.