Let there be light!

I recently fished out this rather tasteless lamp from the skips at the back of our local shopping centre, a source of many useful bits and pieces, including the glass drinks dispenser that we used for brewing in our dandelion and ginger ale, here.

Believe it or not, it's Ralph Lauren, and has a nice rectangular silk shade on top of a rather more ugly, heavy glass base with "Ralph Lauren Home" embossed on the front in gold.  Lovely.  The base had a large chip missing from the corner, which is presumably why it ended up in the skip.  Even more unbelievably the price tag proclaimed this lamp to be £99.99 (yes, that's ninety-nine pounds for a lamp!).  I can almost feel myself turning into my dad as I type that ("It's how much?!").



Tiberius is unimpressed by the lamp.

What was interesting about this lamp was that all the electrical gubbins (another dad word there) including the flex for the plug, was attached to the metal frame that held the light bulb, rather than passing through the base of the lamp and trailing out from the back of the base.  This made me wonder whether I could prise the top of the lamp from the base and reattach it to something else.  Something nicer, which, let's face it, is pretty much anything. 

After checking that the lamp still worked(!), I had a rummage through the log pile and came up with this interesting piece of sycamore from one of the trees in our garden.  I stripped off the bark and lightly sanded it all over.

 

Next, I took a hammer and chisel to the lamp, and with one enthusiastic whack managed to cleanly separate the metal top from the glass base.  While this was surprisingly easy, the next step was more difficult.  The sycamore chunk was relatively flat on the base, but slightly angled at the top.  In order to make a level surface to attach the lamp to, I was going to have to chisel out a wedge from the top of the sycamore. 

Jeez, what a faff!  The sycamore had been weathering for over a year and had dried out, hardening in the process.  Furthermore, the grain of the wood meant that chips of wood splintered off with the chisel, rather than neat strips. 

 

This made it very hard to control the depth of the wedge.  In the end, I hacked out a large hole, that was the right shape to fit the lamp, although not the right depth.  Then I mixed up lots of the wood chippings with wood glue to make a wood 'cement' allowing me to level off the bottom of the hole.  Finally, I set the top of the lamp on the sycamore base with lots more glue and after checking it was (roughly) level, weighted it down until it was dry.

 

 



And here is the finished lamp in action!  I love it, and it's certainly not bad for a morning's work and free materials!