J Miller

I've been getting my electrical wire from a source I don't feel comfortable mentioning right now. I'm not mad at them but the problem is they have some miss marked wiring and that could cause trouble. They've offered to give me a store credit, but it would cost me shipping and I don't feel like spending that.

Here is the deal. Last February I bought some 18-2 SPT-1 and 18-2 SPT-2 electrical cord. The 18-2 SPT-2 is good and the wire is the correct 18 gauge.
The SPT-1 however must be miss marked because the wire is much smaller than the 18 gauge should be.

Here are some pics of the wires:
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The brown wire is 18-2 SPT-1 bought from a Lowes I believe.
The first black wire is 18-2 SPT-1 from an old sewing machine motor.
The second black wire is 18-2 SPT-2 from the supply I bought in Feb.
The third black wire is NOT 18-2 ( more like 20-2 ) SPT-1 from the batch I bought in Feb.
If you look close you can see that all the wires except the bottom one are 18 gauge, the bottom one is smaller.

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Here is a closer comparison view of the wires. This is the second and third black wires shown in the first pic. In this pic you can clearly see the thinner wire is marked 18-2 and yet is thinner than the other wire this "IS" 18 gauge.

Now, I'm not whining or ranting I just thought I'd post this in case others decided to do their own wiring. It never occurred to me to check the wiring gauge of newly purchased wire, especially when it was marked as what I ordered.

I've been taught to never put a smaller gauge wire between the load and the power source than the wire the load uses.
Nother words the sewing machine motor is wired with 18 gauge wire, so don't rewire it with 20 gauge wire. I do not know if it would cause problems or not, but I won't do it.

I can use this thinner wire for rewiring sewing machine lights but I can't use it for controllers or motors. Not sure what I'm gonna do with it as I have 30' ± left.

Does anyone know of a source of 18-2 SPT-1 BLACK electrical cord?

Oh, for those that don't know, the SPT-1 and SPT-2 designations refer to the thickness of the insulation around the wire, not the wire itself. You can see this in my first picture.

Joe