On Sun, 24 Jun 2007 20:36:55 -0700, DerbyDad03 wrote:

On Jun 24, 7:49 pm, Puddin' Man wrote:
On Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:10:04 GMT, "Toller" wrote:

"Puddin' Man" wrote in message
.. .

'allo,

I belong to a little brick bungalow in a midwest city, built in 1954.

It came with a single-gang box with a standard 2-position switch to
control a ceiling fan/light assembly.

Whilst replacing the switch, I noted the usual red and black wires.
One of the black wires was stripped about 1 " in the middle (where
the wire was not cut), kinked, and wire-nutted (nothing else in the
nut, just the kink). Both the strip and the wire nut serve no
purpose whatsoever that I can see.

Has anyone seen anything like this? If so, know why they did it?
Near all the old wiring in this tiny house is extremely simple
and predictable: worries po' me when I see something I can't
explain.

My first guess is that it isn't one wire, but two.

That'll win ya noooooooooo cigar. It's a single length of
single strand 14 g. cu wire.

If not, my second guess is that it used to have a second wire, but no longer
does.

-- It would defy the standard practice of that era that I'm familiar
with,
-- which simply involves cutting and stripping wires, then applying
the
-- wire nut

So? Who's to say that whoever did whatever it is that they did knew
anything about "standard practices"? Many if us have seen many
different types of hack jobs, electrical and otherwise,

True.

I vote for the "second wire that is no longer present" along with a
rookie installation/deinstallation.

Conceivable, but it didn't look like it.

Another possibility is a nicked insulation and not enough wire to cut
it back to the nick, so they simply stripped of the nicked insualtion
and protected the bare wire with a wire nut - mainly because they were
out of electrical tape at the time. ;-)

I guess anything was possible. Part of the reason I posted was
b/c I knew of the previous owners of the house. The first was in
construction trades (roofer), the 2nd was a newspaper guy who
evidently did nothing with wiring. Neither seems likely to have
committed unnatural wiring acts.

But, who knows? Buying a house, even new, is buying at least a few
mysteries.

Cheers,
Puddin'

"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens!"
-Friedrich Schiller