Not sure if this is the appropriate way to handle this situation or not,
looking for feedback...

anyway, background. In my living room there are two boxes for wall
sconces. The PO's of the house had blanked them off and then hung oil
lamps in their place. It is really frustrating to come home after dark
and not really have any light that can easily be turned on from the
front door (there is no ceiling light in the really small foyer area.)
So I determined to remove the oil lamps and reinstall wall sconces.
SWMBO and I have been discussing this ever since we moved in with no
agreement as of yet as to what to install. (She's sort of a Frank Lloyd
Wright girl; my tastes run more in a Raymond Loewy sort of direction.)

Being constantly frustrated by the lack of lighting, I started looking
around the house to see what I could temporarily put up there to serve
as light. I found some old 1940's porcelain bathroom sconces that she'd
picked up at one of those salvage places for possible use in the
bathroom, cleaned them up, found them to actually be quite nice. (hey,
it was either that or some porcelain lampholders that I'd removed from
the basement.) Being porcelain, they also gave the added benefit that I
didn't have to feel guilty about not grounding the wall boxes. I
disassembled them and found that the sockets were connected to the wires
by screw terminals, about the same size/shape as those found on a
standard receptacle. I dug out some 14AWG THHN and rewired them. The
original wire appeared to be 16 or 18 AWG stranded cloth covered wire,
just wrapped around the screw terminals. The 14 wouldn't fit under the
terminals neatly, but after tinning them with solder and treating them
like solid wire they worked perfectly.

So now I have light in my living room, which is nice and functional, but
they look awful enough that perhaps now she'll get serious about picking
out some permanent sconces

Question is, are there any negative implications of tinning a stranded
wire that goes under a screw? (loosening over time, etc?) Should I try
to find some smaller wire and redo them, since they may actually be
permanently installed elsewhere later on?

thanks

nate

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