How to Make Lamps from "Junk" and other Upcycled Stuff

hey it's Tim and I'm gonna actually narrate this video a little bit because I was trying to do a lot in a short amount of time I made a whole bunch of lamps just to sort of show how the sky is sort of the limit for making lamps but so I skipped a lot of steps in the video editing to speed this along a little bit now the first thing I want to point out is that you can go to box stores and buy lamp kits but they're very expensive over $12 for that one or you go to the second-hand store and just buy another lamp nobody wants anymore and get all the parts you need out of that but just inspect the lamp before you buy it to make sure it has what you need for the lamp you're thinking about building after a while if you're like me you start having a collection of spare lamp parts so I just sort of go to the boxes and find stuff but I you know just inspect it before you buy it and here you can see this is a lamp kit equivalent to that 1247 one of the store that I got for $2.99 now I could cut this wire and splice it or I could open this all up and disconnect the solder joint or I could do that it was a little uncharacteristic for me but I mean really what I'm going to do with that if I tried to save it got ideas of what I can do with these remnants post it in the comments below I see lots of lamps made out of mugs and bottles and whatnot where they put the bulb sort of in the mouth and I was going to do that with this and put the the cuff on it as like a lampshade but then I thought it'd be kind of fun to flip that upside down and so instead of having it upright with a lampshade above it I decided to put the lampshade below it now you know I threaded the the pipe in the rod and stuff and I used a little bit of epoxy to help set it had a ceramic lamp thing I was able to stick inside there and that's just epoxy holding it in I painted it brown eye splice it together with a switch on the base and it's done I love globes and I had this kind of cruddy globe laying around so I just made this sort of for example I thought the best club in the world but I you know there's just a lot that can be done with them this one I made two lamps out of one goes into the stands as like sort of like a desk lamp and the other one hangs from the ceiling like a so like a pendant lamp or a drum lamp or something i spray-painted the inside there a minute ago silver to help you reflective I probably would have run these wires different next time she saw an off switch I wired it all up and to drill a couple holes just a little bit of problem-solving like I said this wasn't the best globe to make a lamp out of but it looks pretty cool and these globes are obviously made of cardboard so just be cautious if you make lamps out of them and use bulbs that aren't going to heat up too much like CFLs or LEDs now I've made lamp set of drums before and specifically putting the drum shell and drilling holes in having a light kind of go through the top of the drum as well as from underneath the drum and through that and I've used drum sticks before in different lamps but I didn't have another drum to spare this time I didn't have a whole bunch of drum sticks though so I thought it would just be pretty cool to make a very simple drumstick lamp this epoxy and drum sticks sort of artfully put on a base and it would be really cool to put a drum shade like a drum shade on top of this I would do this the best lamp ever now these are directionals off of a Volkswagen Beetle like a 70s one so it was a they're just cool looking to begin with and I've done wall sconces like this before with other tail lights of off cars that aren't quite as cool-looking and they still look cool so I know what I'm doing they're just looking for a wood to put them on I think I found that nice piece of cherry in order to make these I had to put a smaller bulb in like a candelabra type bulb and I had to do a little bit of kind of cutting open some sub lights and soldering them back together to make it fit but it wasn't that big of a deal and then I used a keyhole that's coming up in a second here I just drilled a little hole and have a keyhole router bit so I was able to just sort of slot the wood so it would hang on the wall good here I'm sorry in the light switch it just fits right in there but you have a friction fit now I wired these with a switch but they could also be hardwired right to the wall this is a made this lamp in a five-foot tall version about eight years ago and so I'm just recreating it here all those little bits and pieces of scrap especially like the nice pieces of wood I have a hard time throwing them away so what I wanted to do is sort of stack them up like Jenga and I did a really bad job filming this I apologize but I drilled a hole it's a little bit wider than the post that holds the wiring so the blocks just slide right over it as they are there and you can actually spin them around they're not glued together so it's like a different lamp every day and then if you didn't see my satellite chair build I recommend you check it out but I built a chair out of satellite dishes and have a whole bunch of parts left over so I want to keep using him as much as I can that is so awesome with that they used some really strong weather proofing on these things that was very gummy and hard to get off so that was most of the work really was just cleaning that up and getting all the innards out that were sealed up and I just made those holes wide enough to handle a light socket again a small like a mini light socket and make the wires go through welded together a simple shape out of the parts epoxy the the fittings in that was it oh those are these nice little crimps you can use to crimp wires together and there's a special pliers that I'm using there but you could use use normal pliers to do it as well just harder and it was a little tricky I did spray-paint it the parts that I welded inside a spray painted him gray again I was a little tricky lining it all up and it looks pretty cool just switching their lamps are like upcycling 101 just about anything can be turned into a lamp with very limited tools and for very limited expenses usually three dollars the second-hand store is all you need to spend these are just a few ideas of some of the many many many things that can get turned into lamps and I would love to see your idea so please share them with me on various social media platforms or whatever thanks very much for watching if you like this video you can like share and subscribe and all that stuff you can also support me over on patreon com and if you like into these lamps they're going to be for sale on my Etsy shop well thanks and have a great day

Channel: tim sway

Views: 228,248

Keywords: diy, reclaimed, upcycle, upcycling, how to, woodworking video, make, maker, imake, dumpster dive, second hand, art, sculpture, reclaimed wood

Id: UnI0OqgrmrE

Length: 6min 52sec (412 seconds)

Published: Sun May 22 2016