Light Fixtures

My first pass at making a light. If you click on the photo a time or two it'll embiggen enough for you to see the twisted wire, which I'm particularly fond of

Various lighting parts

The plywood parts for our cabinetry all cut up and ready for assembly

Yesterday I received a bunch of lighting and electrical parts in the mail. I plan to start experimenting with various light fixture ideas and I'm really excited about it. The materials themselves are beautiful -- lots of brass, copper, porcelain, nickle plate, clear and colored glass, and vintage fabric covered double twist wire. Great stuff.

In order to qualify for certain Efficiency Vermont rebates you need to have a minimum of 10 pin-based fixtures hard-wired into your house, so we need to determine which will be pin based and which will not. Happily, I can build most lights as pin-based sockets, but some will not work because of size constraints.

Today I experimented with one of the insulators. The first task was to drill a hole through the top of the 3/8" thick glass. This took a while but was no problem, although I was a little paranoid about the glass powder produced. Seems like a potential hazard. Maybe having a vacuum on hand and running it often? Maybe make a vacuum-table work surface? In any event, once I had the hole drilled it was quick work to wire in the little light base, mount it in the light and wire a plug to the other end. I pretty much thought of everything I might need except --you guessed it-- a light bulb. I was able to find one that sorta fit from our old chandelier just to get a feel for it, but it takes away from the effect, so it'll be nice to get a more appropriately fitting bulb. Other then that, it was a piece of cake. I'm pretty excited to make more.

I spent most of the day cutting up the plywood for our cabinetry. Unless I made any mistakes in my plan, I should have everything I need to build the cabinet boxes with what I cut today. After this it's back to hard wood for the frame, doors, and drawers.

I'll be taking a working vacation next week because I'm teaching a class at Yestermorrow called "Less is More". The class is a design course centered on small homes and living spaces. So, my work on the house will be minimal-to-none, but Joe and Felton will still be here making progress.