Wednesday, February 25, 2026

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 60) - Updated General Shop Lighting

As I've mentioned before in several posts, I've been needing proper 'general lighting' in my shop for a very long time.

This is one of my new 48" LED Light Bar units with "Ambient" setting, hung over my work-bench to add some lighting to that space.

I was expecting to use second-hand fluorescent fixtures from a friend, but fluorescents are such a pain to get working right, and keep them working with tubes, ballast, etc all constantly wanting to cause trouble. 

So, What Am I Upgrading To?


Then this week I was wondering around Costco.  I found some 48" LED light bars from Feit Electric.  Each unit is $30.


These 10k Lumen lights certainly will fit the bill.  They have three lighting modes, to vary how much light is emitted, based on what I need and how much light is sent to different parts of the room.


The "Ambient" mode is about twice as bright as I want for my 'night' blue layout lighting, but it is certainly enough for human navigation around the shop, and wouldn't be bad to compliment "Daytime" layout lighting, in the general walking area.  

The lighting installed on the center of the roof. - Don't mind the 'stuff' lower in the frame.  Yes, I need to do some Spring Cleaning!

Each unit comes with plenty of mounting options.  For the four main unit array that I want in the middle of the room, I located them on ~48" centers, which are on every-other-stringer in the ceiling.  I used the screw-head mount on the hole-and-slot system.  The power cables are allowed to connect to the adjacent unit, up to 4 units, which is what I have set up.  The cords form a zig-zag pattern, alternating as shown in the photo left-right-left-right.  They certainly put out enough light in the main "down light" operation, I don't see any reason to have them on 24" centers.  I also found that the "Downward" Main setting does focus the light more down to the center of the room, and has less side 'throw' out towards the doors and layout area.

My layout room has light-switches next to the doors, which run the 110V power plugs right next to the doors.  This allows the normal 'light switch' to power whatever lighting I plug into that, where as my around-the-wall sockets are always-on.

These LED bars have pull-chains to cycle through the lighting settings.  However, I can also control the whole array from the wall switch.  Quickly cycling on-off-on changes the units to the next setting.  Within about 10-15 seconds I can cycle the whole array from Ambient to Max, or to Downward only.

Workbench Too?


Recently, I've been needing to do some contract work on my work bench space.  Not having good lighting there has been a limiting factor.


I decided to mount the 'open hooks' on the stringer centers, again 48", but to use the screw heads in the slots method need 44" centers for the screws.  

This is the pull-chain and slide switch end of the unit.

This installation required that I had a longer mounting method.  The units are hung from their "Inverted-V" hooks, catching into the corners of the lighting unit.

This is the 'blind end' of the unit, which has a female 110V plug to connect additional units to.

With the unit hung 22" off of the wall, over my 24" wide workbench, this makes my work area MUCH brighter now.  So there will be no more issues of not having enough light.  Remember that this mount is actually inside the line of "Layout lighting" strips, and actually hangs in front of it.  This means that this unit actually casts a shadow on the wall, just above the yard at Owenyo.  So ideally this light will be unhooked when the layout will be in operation.  I have a second desk and the lathe which will each have a set of mounting hooks to set up this style of lighting there if I need it.

Motion Sensors Too?


While I'm not really planning to use the motion sensors on the installations in my shop, this certainly is a good feature to have if you need it.

Slide switches for motion sensors.

The slide switches set for 1 minute, 5 minute, 10 minutes to turn the lighting off.  The motion sensors can also be adjusted from OFF, to 0-5 feet, 5-10 feet, and 10-20 feet.  I didn't notice, but the far unit was set to turn off, and I spent some time at the other end of the shop and it turned off.  I moved slightly under the first light, and the far unit saw my foot move, so it turned on, which was ~12 feet away.

In Closing


I'm sure if I wanted to mess with it, I could put all four units on motion and then they could light up as soon as I walk into the room.  I'm a little hesitant to do that in the long run when the layout is up and running with it's own lighting as I won't want the 'shop lights' turning on and off during the session.  So by that point, I'll surely have the motion sensing disabled.

Jason Hill


Jawbone Branch Layout Build Index
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