The wire that is springy is tempered steel. It was used during world war 2 in many fluorescent snd other fixtures. The war time restrictions on metals dictated it. It is heat treated to resist rust and it is a slightly better conductor. The insulation has no rubber in it, only several cotton braids over each other. It is pretty rare, so definitely leave it in place. Some ballasts had it too. Try a magnet on it. It will stick. Designed for world war 2 material rationing. I have fluorescent units with it as well. The 2 lamp ballast has 2 separate 20 watt chokes inside and it is known as a 2-multiple ballast. I have a rare 3-multiple GE ballast that is pretty rare, and there are also even rarer 4-multiple ballasts! Glad ya didn’t use cool white. They are nasty and are trash can fodder. Cheers! 😋
I want my own place so I can install these 2 circline florescent I got on ebay! My parents would never want these installed they prefer these incandescent octagonal ones. These you installed are awesome. I love the flicker and stuff.
Wow, those fixtures turned out great! It kind of has me tempted to go through and fully repaint my half-pipe kitchen unit! Since your last upload, I actually ended up acquiring three more kitchen units incredibly lol. (I probably ought to video my own)Regarding that really weird stiff wire I’m pretty sure I’ve encountered that stuff before as well, and I am pretty sure it’s steel. Possibly made around World War II era during the material shortages and rationing I would think. Good score with those 4 inch fitters, from what I’ve seen the kitchen units would’ve shipped with acorn style low profile plugs so they would fit in the adapter and fitter. Anyways, I enjoyed the video, thanks for sharing!
These F20 kitchen units are so beautiful. I once installed one on a modern ceiling fan light kit. Installation was more painstakingly difficult than I anticipated. In the future, I might consider using a 4 inch ceiling fan light kit to help convert one of those kitchen units into a long chain swag lamp.
I've gotten a whole bunch of 12V 15W fixtures that are single bulb and dual bulb. Also repaired a 12V ballast for a 9W CFT9 bulb. Ballast for it the caps was blown and the transistors was blown. Fixed it with new caps and transistors and she is good as new! Also gotten the kind of ballasts for buses that are also preheat type, but not like this. You use the control wire on it to turn off the high voltage side and leave the filaments glowing. This ballast is 24V.
Hey! I actually have a few 4 bulb fluorescent lights from the 60's! Still use them till this day, i even have a few of those weird single post weirdly shaped gas station lights still in use
3500K fluorescent lights are named "Neutral White", "White", or as the Chinese GE calls it, "Bright White". Even though the Bright White name is commonly used to refer to 3000K.
