I know I know, I'm sorry too! But my innate desire for data is overwhelming I hate assumptions and I worship statistical analysis =) one of my favorite phrases is 'the devil is in the details' toys aren't always 'toys' =) The fundamental nature of even trivial things is a deep interest of mine (and the cause of many headaches and lost sleep I might add)
The current shunt could be anything that will tolerate the power without heating significantly enough to effect the reading. I'd suggest a short stub piece of Cat3 cable. It's solid core of a known wire gauge and the voltage drop across the low resistance is subject to nothing more than a quick Google search for the effective voltage drop at the expected currents, you could tune one to any mv/amp range, up to even 100amps if you have the patience to wire strip and bind the ends, assuming again the nominal wire gauge is what is expected.
I have low value resistors sufficient to be used as shunts for 1amp easily but my basement is however in the process of a massive effort of organization. If I don't get my wifes side cleared out this weekend there'll be hell to pay, and aside from that I'm very quickly coming to terms with the fact that organization and simply having what is needed when it's required where you expect it to be is the only limiting factor in creating pretty much anything the imagination can come up with.
When we bought the house last year (around this time) I posted on here that it'd be about a year before I had my first major project going. I can tell you this... I was truthful, but it's not electronic in nature (aside from some mundane wiring), it's management all the way.
There's an adage, "When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail"
Try sweeping the floor with a hammer.
The **broken link removed**applies so fundamentally to even basic actions that I've become moderately enamored of understanding the fundamental minimum of what I need to do what I want. If I ever get to sleep tonight I'll be working on that tomorrow with some power tools to make a tool housing that doesn't require me to rummage around for 30 seconds to get the one tool I need.
I'll use a day of construction to save 10 seconds on something that is repeated 100 times a day, because it will save 15 minutes a day. In 1 year, the time saved will be 3.802 days vs the 1 day spent on construction.
I'd be grateful for pictures, I love this kind of sharing of how people do DIY type stuff at home.
I've put in a request to have the last few posts of this thread moved to a new thread in the members lounge to avoid contaminating to original posters thread worse than we already are (hopefully they are experimenting rather than posting)