Thread: blacklights inside rub rail

plan on ordering strips for my boat after the holiday weekend. I think I'll put half a blue strip on each side of the boat about the middle to have visible light for throwing to structure. I can hook the blue lights alone into the same dimmer I have all my deck lights attached to. The dimmer works great for those who might think all that light would affect their night vision. Killed that bird dead in the head. Cant figure out why these set ups havent made it to cabelas or bass pro by now. I know for a fact that the led's on my boat right now kicks the **** out of any and I mean any factory installed lighting on any boat made, there is no comparison. Like I said all my compartments, livewells, storage, bilge area, and even my trailer are screaming with led's. And they by far out shine, out last and out perform anything any boat manufacutrer out there puts on their rigs. Where did you get the idea from? Sounds like you make a few trips to florida each year. Heard that the led's are taking off pretty good down there as well, lake okeechobee. Been there myself a few times, great fishing. 30' to me sounds like equal distance for any flourescent fixture out there. For those who are reading--dont care who you are or what you use, you cant beat the leds, my rig is smokin' you should hear all the comments that I get from my set up at the lake, it kinda makes em take 2 steps back before they ask me who did my lights.
Waterdog, my hats off to ya buddy, again thanx for all your information and you made a great video, dont think anyone wanting to do this for themselves will have any trouble with the install, rub rail has plenty of room inside for everything to go neat and clean. Hope you catch plenty of fish with your lights. thanx again....c.

Waterdog, thank you very much for a very interesting post and video. I fish from an aluminum boat, Tracker Pro Crappie 175, and just went to the garage to check the bump rail. It doesn't go all the way around the bow, but does run down each side. I'll look to see if these light will fit in there.

went ahead and ordered 6 uv strips and 2 blue for lighting up the bank, couldnt stand it had to order them. c.

Nice job.

havent received the rub lights yet. and will test to determine if they truly are worthy of installation and desecration of my beloved rub rail, new one is like 100bux. I do however have my doubts to the intensity of the silicone encased lights. From my experience with leds you get a more intense light if the lense is clear. In the case of the superbright strips the lenses are clouded due to the fact that they are encased in silicone or some other waterproof material. Removing the encapsulation from just the portion of the lense that is positioned flush with your rail would be too much of a pain on 800 individual bulbs. Lets just hope that the intensity is enough to authorize rub rail deformation. Point is that since all my current lights are "integrated" as part of the boat I would like to continue this trend with the rub rail lights. Non integral components are just something else to baby sit. I prefer integral vs non integral components thats why my wallet and car keys are on a chain. When the strips get here I plan on simulating rub rail performance by setting up the strips covering all but what would normally be exposed when installed in the rail so as to not get confused by having enough light from the strips before installation, and not having enough when installed, due to the fact that just the head of the lens is the only thing exposed when actually installed. Leds are very bright, but disperse fairly close. Visible light from leds are noticably more intense and true to color more than incandescent lights, but most of the time the incandescent lighting will travel farther than the leds. But since we are focusing on lighting up pretty much just your fishing line because the human eye really cant process uv light very well, hopefully the effectiveness of the uv stips that waterdog has mentioned on numerous forums will actually perform and be effective up to 30'. This distance will be more than enough for my night time adventures, for that matter I'm lucky to be fishing further than 30' off the bank during the day time. Im not trying to disprove w'dogs ingenuity, I am also into saving myself a little extra cash with a little elbow grease. Most people wouldn't even attept a project such as this mostly due to little to no electrical experience, but most of the time as long as you're using your head, you can amaze yourself with what you can accomplish. After spending the cash on the rail lighting system I'm going to make darn sure that this is going to do the job or am I going to have to spend just a tad more and get the nucli-eye led light? Maybe if the light strips dont impress me, i'll just can the whole idea or put it off til I can go with a couple of peeps that night fish to justify my spending. Who knows, but I can assure you that after I test the strips for myself that I'll let you all know about it. :D

WOW I hope it works out for you

Hows come none of you other guys on here have attempted this project? Is it because you dont fish at night? Already have uv lights that you've been using in the past? Hmmm, or maybe is it because of the leds being relatively new technology that puts you in doubt of maybe your old stand by is out dated but gets the job done? Just wondering....c.

received lights today, very well packaged. leads on both ends are nice due to the fact that I'll be cutting the 2 blue strips in half. The blue strips are hella bright, no doubt that these babies will be bright enough. The uv lights are dull, but then again, I lit them up during the daytime in the garage, also uv is kinda hard to detect any way. Just have to wait til its dark outside this evening before work to test and see if the uv's will be strong enough to make my line glow sufficiently up to 30' like w'dog said. Altogether I bought 8 strips--6-uv and 2-blue. The blue will act as the moon glow lights just like the competition. Now to determine if I actually want to switch each side separately or not, or to tie the moon glows into my deck lighting package because those lights can be dimmed. So many choices man. Guess I can go ahead and run all the wires and decide when I get all the leads back at the console where the switches will be installed anyway. The strips look very well constructed due to the silicone encapsulation. The leading competition strips look very much the same as the superbright models. I believe each led is the 5mm type led. At 1000mcd for the blue per led, that is kinda below the intensity of the individual leds I have purchased in the past from besthongkong.com, think they were something like 5000mcd per led, but since the leds from superbright are encapsulated this basically frosts the lens, so your light would be dispersed if you had made the strip yourself, you would have had the same problem. I thought also that lights might not be sufficient enough when installed into the rub rail. When I fired the strips up individually, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there is almost no glow from the sides or the rear of the strip. So if you might have been thinking of using these strips on something else you cannot redirect the light emmitting from the sides or rear of the leds in the strip, meaning you cant salvage any light emitting from some place other than the front of the strip because there is none to salvage. Cant wait to get started, like I said before I really need to test the uv a little more before I decide to start drilling my beloved railing. All in all I'm really impressed in the blue, we'll see about the uv. I did however check the specs out on the uv led's from best hong kong and it seems to me that the uv leds in the superbright strips are about the same as the ones from best hong kong. They dont have an mcd rating on the uv bulbs only the wavelength 400+nM is all that I gather from either site. Dont wish to pursue wavelengths on visible light, just want to see if the uv will be strong enough. For some reason I think that even if 1 strip isnt enough I think that 6 strips should be fine, more strips=more light. Holla bak

would like to discuss the led lighting with you are u still on the forums?

Sorry havent found much net material on lights, had to just go for it. Glad I did, installed the uv and threw in some pretty blue ones as well. To let U all know if they work....first time I had boat out to test them which has been a while ago, my spot light went out on me half way back to the ramp, sure glad I put the blue lights in there, didnt have to worry about running into anything. Funny thing was that I only installed 200 blue lights, if I would have put 100 more lights on my rig, I would be comfortable letting my 6yr old swim outside around the boat at 2am, prolly gonna install the 100 extra lights this winter.