Light hanging help

[Reefer Madness]

So I would like to ditch my ghetto rigged light set up and hang my lights. I like the style of the cable and the company i purchased my lights from have a set up but the wire itself looks very thin. I figured I'm going to have to use toggle bolts and would rather go bigger than smaller. Would it be better to just buy some thicker cable loop it around the rms rail and use a wire rope clamp?

 

[MarcosD]

I used these to hang my lights with the hanging kit that comes with the lights

 

[Reefer Madness]

Yeah i feel pretty dumb now after adding all the weight up of the lights. I'm looking at less than 20 pounds of total weight. So I guess i wouldn't need to go super crazy with toggler bolts and a crazy thick diameter cable.

 

[richiev]

I hang all my lights with fishing line attached to basic screw in hooks. Invisible, and more than strong enough. Your cables will be more than more than strong enough

 

[MichaelB]

+1 What you have should be more than good enough as long as your not planning to swing from them like on the movies.

 

[PjFish]

I hang all my lights with fishing line attached to basic screw in hooks. Invisible, and more than strong enough. Your cables will be more than more than strong enough

What pound test you using? Fluorocarbon?

 

[popper]

I hang all my lights with fishing line attached to basic screw in hooks. Invisible, and more than strong enough. Your cables will be more than more than strong enoug

Thats a good idea. Doesnt polyethelene wears out overtime?

 

[PjFish]

Thats a good idea. Doesnt polyethelene wears out overtime?

Regular monofilament exposed to sun, humidity and sun screens will make it brittle but if you use a larger diameter pound test line like over 30lb/50lb that will take a long time to get weaker or braided line.. Fluorocarbon does not absorb water nor affected by sunscreens as easy so may last longer depending on conditions..Fishing lines take several 100’s of years to decompose

 

[richiev]

I'm using whatever I happened to have on hand, can't say in detail off hand but could track it down if folks are interested. Regarding the strengths, fishing line when catching a fish is subject to sunlight and friction and ... Though the weight is just about weight and not accounting for that, I imagine in practice because people are lazy and buy the strong one that's small there probably is more strength then weight says.

More importantly when hanging lights I usually have multiple, independent, strands and multiple loops. On a light with 2 mounting points I'd have one line on each side, with each routed to the top and looped through the bottom. Double lines splits the weight across both, and though the looped doesn't make one line fully independently two, it does reduce the load carried by any part of the strand.

In that case a 5lb light hanging in that manner would have 2.5lb on each line, and each vertical piece supporting 1.25lbs. Pretty easy to oversize and have low, IMO, risk on it.

The main complication I've encountered is that initial setup can be kind of tricky, getting everything evened out.

Pics I'd shared in the past, coincidentally last Christmas: