Wine Bottle Filament Bulb Lamp With a Magnetic Switch!

In this project, I will show you how to make an absolutely beautiful lamp out of wine bottle. The bottle features a magnetic on/off switch! To turn the lamp on, you simply put the cork into the top of the bottle! It is not an easy project at all. It took me quite a while to finish it all up, but I'm absolutely loving the results. Give yourself a week of evenings to finish it up.

There are so many small details to cover it is very hard to write about them and use photos. This is why I've included a very detailed build video. Watch the build video thoroughly before you begin this project. The instructable outlines all the major steps, and can be used as a reference guide so you don't have to keep going through the video.

Supplies

Ingredients:

Large sized wine bottle with a cork top! Screw tops won't look good
Extra cork
Sisal rope
LED Filaments - I used the filaments out of a el cheapo Edison bulb from Walmart. You can totally buy these from amazon as well and not have to mess around with breaking lightbulbs. It would be much easier as well!
Power cord - I used a 6 foot power extension cord
14AWG & 18AWG bare copper wire
28AWG stranded wire assorted colors
Heatshrink
Electrical tape
Olive oil and baking soda
Two strong magnets
Zipties
Scotch tape
JB weld clear quick set
CA (Superglue) and accelerator (if you don't want to sit around all day)
Sharpie
M2 standoff or screw insert
Walmart bag or two
Compressed air

Tools:

Hot pot or water kettle that can boil a lot of water at a time
Dremel **cough** rotary tool! (I love dremels :)
Sanding drum
Cylindrical grinding burr
Tapered grinding burr
Sandpaper
PPE (Gloves & Eyewear)
Drill with assorted drill bits
Hot glue gun (what is a DIY project without the worst glue in the world!?)
Glass cutter (you can buy a kit, or just get a cheap one from Ace Hardware)
DMM
Soldering Iron & solder
Wire strippers and cutters
Assorted pliers
Razor blade
Bamboo skewer or chopsticks
3D printer (if you don't have one, you can make the base for the bottle out of wood! I don't know how to work with wood tools, so I just used a 3D printer

Step 1: Note About Safety

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING YOU DO. THIS PROJECT INVOLES DANGERS WITH GLASS AND LIVE AC POWER AND YOU ARE AT YOUR OWN RISK IF YOU DECIDE TO MAKE THIS.

This project involves a lot of cutting and breaking glass. Make sure you use gloves and eyewear, as well as clean up your work area thoroughly to avoid any glass cuts. Also we will be working with LIVE AC power. AC power can be dangerous! It can shock you or worse, especially if you are wearing a pacemaker or any other medical devices. Please take great care while working with AC.

If you take some basic safety precautions, everything will go just fine! Don't get complacent, pay attention, and USE PPE where necessary.

Keep this project away from small children/animals. If the lamp is plugged in, and it falls and shatters, there will be live AC connections on the inside. Use your brain and be safe!

Step 2: Cut the Bottle

The bottle must be the larger sized wine bottle that is clear and has a cork top.
Empty the bottle and clean it. Use hot water and a razor blade to remove the labels, then equal parts baking soda and olive oil to remove the label residue.
Mount your glass cutter about an inch and a half from the bottom of a table.
Apply even pressure to the bottle and begin scoring. You must score all the way around, and the score lines must match up perfectly. If they don't, you will get a bad cut. Practice with a sharpie if you are not sure.
Pour boiling water over the score, then immediately switch to cold tap water. You should see the score line propagate through the bottle! Repeat hot & cold cycles until the bottle breaks cleanly.
Sand the edge of the bottle down, it will be sharp!

Step 3: Smash the Lightbulbs!

BE CAREFUL! Use gloves and eyewear and break the bulbs inside of a bag.
Break the glass with a metal object, but not so hard you damage the LEDs inside.
You will need to remove the LEDs, but also figure out how they are wired. Mine were all wired in series. The positive side of the filament was marked with a little hole. This took me about 2 lightbulbs to figure out where all the connections were. You will need to keep track of:
Positive wire from circuit board
Corresponding positive marking on the LED
Negative wire from circuit board
Hot or Live AC wire
Neutral AC wire
Are they wired in series or parallel?
Remove the filaments from the bulb, and clean them with compressed air to remove the glass shards stuck to the bulbs. Don't blow the glass onto your floor!

Step 4: 3D Print Base

I decided to 3D print a base for this project, and you will need the following dimensions:

ID (inner diameter) and OD of the wine bottle
Diameter of the sisal rope
Thickness and height of the power cord
How far you'd like the insert to go into the bottle. I made enough room to put the electronics in and give me some working room.

I've included my model in .step & Fusion360 files for you.

Use a piece of tape to mark how far the insert goes into the bottle. This line is very important and will be reference for the entire switching mechanism.

Step 5: Magnetic Switch Part A

Using the 14 AWG wire, we are going to fashion a length of wire that is long enough to extend past the bottle insert, and it will have a circle at the top that is slightly larger than the opening of the bottle neck. It needs to be centered, and it needs to be very straight. This part will be called the "receiver".
Using the 18AWG wire, make a triangle to fit inside the receiver. It needs to be large enough to contact both sides of the circle of the receiver. The wire needs to be long enough to reach outside the neck of the bottle, and it needs to be very straight as well. This part we will call the "arm".

Step 6: Magnetic Switch Part B

Locate the seam on the bottle, this is where we will be attaching the receiver.
Fold the edges of the scotch tape over to create little pull tabs for easy removal.
Tape the receiver in the bottle alongside the seam.
Use another piece of tape at the very top of the receiver. This will help hold the wire against the curvature of the bottle for when we apply glue to that spot later. DO NOT GLUE THE CURVY PART YET! If you do, the glue will run and look terrible.
Use a bamboo skewer or chopsticks to help you apply the JB weld inside of the bottle. Try to get glue underneath, around, and on top of the wire for a good bond. Wait 20-30 or until the glue has solidified, then you can add glue in the spots you had tape.

Step 7: Magnetic Switch Part C

We will use the cheap cork that came with this bottle because they are easier to cut. Make a shallow cutline along the halfway point of the cork, and begin shaving material up to this line. The goal here is to shave down the cork enough to easily slide into the bottle top. I used a razor blade for the main cuts, but followed it up with a dremel and sanding drum to help round it off.
Use a grinding burr to hollow out a spot in the bottom of the cork to insert a magnet. Use superglue to secure the magnet.
Use a paper to mark the distance at which the magnets attract each other. This distance needs to be marked on the bottle.
Insert the arm into the bottle, and back it off of the receiver about 1/2" to 3/4", this is going to be our off position. Mark the arm at the spot we made on the bottle. I couldn't get a sharpie in here, so I used a sticky piece of tape at first, pulled the arm and and sharpied it.

Step 8: Magnetic Switch Part D

Cut off a small piece of a nicer cork, and drill a hole in the middle of it large enough for a M2 insert.
The wire won't slide well inside the cork, so we are going to use a brass M2 insert. Use drill bits to remove all the threads from the inside of the insert, then use a tapered grinding burr to bevel each end of the insert. Press this insert into the center of the cork.
Sand down the cork with a sanding drum until it has a good press fit on the inside of the bottle neck on the line we marked earlier. You will need to put this cork in from the bottom of the bottle, it won't fit in from the top. Use a skewer to help you press it into place.

Step 9: Magnetic Switch Part E

Slide the cork insert onto the arm FIRST!
We need to mount the magnet at the mark we made on the arm. I did this by bending the wire into a little cage to hold the magnet. Make sure you get the direction of the magnet correct!
Insert the arm assembly and make sure that it attracts the arm up, the arms rides smoothly straight up and down, it makes contact with the circle of the receiver, and when the cork switch is pulled out, it falls below enough to break contact.
Pull it back out, and solder a 1.5" long length of stranded 28 gauge wire with the insulation removed. We are using stranded wire because it is very light and easy to bend. On the end of the 28 gauge wire, we'll attach a section of the 14AWG copper wire to it that is long enough to extend out the bottle. This will be the electrical contact for the second side of the switch. Bend this wire to fit the curvature of the bottle and test the magnetic switch again.
If everything looks like it's working, tape the 14AWG wire that's attached to the arm on the bottle on the opposite side of the receiver. Glue it in place.
The stranded wire needs to bent so that the arm falls down into the middle of the receiver, this can be done with a little hook.

Step 10: LED Tower

This tower will not only support the LED filaments in place, but it will also be the electrical contact for them.

Drill holes in the base as shown in the first picture. These holes must be large enough for the 14AWG wire to go into them.
Insert a section of straightened 14AWG wire into one of the center holes.
Insert the base with the wire into the lamp, and you will need to mark how high the wire can sit. We don't want it to touch any of the circuitry in the top of the lamp! That switching circuit is carrying 120VAC through it, and the structure for the LEDs will be at whatever DC level your circuit board outputs.
Bend the wire at the mark you made and put a ziptie around it to hold it in place.
Repeat on the other side. These towers will be our positive connection.
Isolate the two sides of the circuit with a section of cork. Use CA to hold it in place. I choose to bend then wires out at 90 degree angle so that it would make soldering my LEDs onto them a little bit easier.
Solder all your LEDs together in the pattern of your choice! Remember which configuration they need to be in. Some bulbs are wired in series, and some are wired in parallel. Mine were in series, so I came up with this pattern to support that.
Put the structure into the bottle to make sure that everything fits, and that none of the bare wires from the LEDs and their tower are touching the switching wires on the top or on the bottle sides.

Step 11: Adding Electrical Connections

Create a bar of 18AWG wire that will support the bottoms of the LEDs and connect the two grounds together. It can be held in place with a ziptie just like the towers.
Connect the grounds of the LEDs to this grounding bar
Add a black stranded wire to the grounding bar and two red stranded wires to the positive towers.
Cover the wires with glue to ensure they stay in the right spot!
Connect wires to both sides of the switch, the receiver and the wire attached to the arm. They need to be 2 or 3 inches longer than the height of your tower.

Step 12: Prepping for Assembly Part A

You will need to drill two additional holes in the base for the wires for switch. They need to be offset from the edge of the circle by about 5-8mm. We need to leave enough room for the rope to go around it.
Cover the base with sisal rope! Use hotglue to adhere it to the base. I did the first piece of rope around the outer circumference of the base. The second one I cut into two sections so that I could leave room to access the holes we made earlier for the wires going to the switch.
Finish covering the rest of the base with the rope. I chose to lay down horizontal strips.
Use a lighter to burn off the frayed bits of rope, and to get rid of the spider webs caused by glue.

Step 13: Prepping for Assembly Part B

The glue that's holding the wires for the switch looks terrible, so we are going to add sections of rope on either side of the wire. This will help hide it from view. Singe the wires before you glue the, or else you'll have a tough time doing after they are in place (I'm speaking from experience :) We'll also take care of the outside of the bottle later.
Build up layers of electrical tape around the base so that it makes snug fit with the bottle.
Electrically isolate the bare copper wires on the inside of the base with two layers of duct tape.

Step 14: Assemble!!!

This is your last chance to make the inside of the bottle look pretty! Clean out any stray sisal rope or glue. To assemble, you will need to feed the wires from the switch through the base, then begin pressing the base into the bottle while pulling on the wires to straighten them out.

Step 15: Wiring

Find the hot and neutral wires of your cord with your DMM in continuity mode. The larger tab on the plug is neutral, and the smaller tab is hot.
Prepare the circuit boards. I rotated the boards so that the negative and the AC hot connections where close together, and I could just bridge them with solder. You could just use wires instead. Connect the following from both boards together:
AC hot on both boards
AC neutral on both boards
GND on both boards
Leave the positive connections open right now.
Hot goes to the RECEIVER. If you connect it to the arm instead, the magnet arm in the top of the bottle will be at 120V potential. If someone where to put their fingers in it, they could get shocked or worse. With the hot connected to the receiver, you have to put the cork in the bottle first before the arm has voltage on it.
The wire from the arm (switched AC hot) goes to AC hot on both boards.
AC neutral connects to neutral on both boards.
The negative wire from the ground bar goes to negative on both boards.
The positive wires from one tower goes the positive on one board, repeating the same with the other positive wire.
Make sure all connections are covered with heatshrink, glue, or tape for safety!
Glue the circuit boards down
Glue the AC power cord for strain relief
Give the lamp a test before you begin final assembly!

Step 16: Final Assembly

The bottle opening wasn't as round as I'd like it to be, so I added some hotglue in the cracks between the base and the bottle just to make sure it wasn't going anywhere. I then screwed the base on.

Step 17: Beautification

Begin gluing strips of sisal rope around the base and bottom of the bottle until you completely cover the 3D printed insert. Put the seam of the rope in the back so you don't see it! Take note that the glass cools the glue down very quickly, so work in small sections at a time.
Add a small ring on the top of the bottle just above the magnetic switch.
Run 3 sections of rope from the small ring down to the base. This will hide the glue from the switch wires that are on the inside of the wire. Singe all the rope to your liking.

Step 18: Final Step!

That special switching cork is going to run away from us if we don't attach it somewhere! Extract a small section of string from the sisal, and tie it around the cork, using CA glue to adhere it to the cork. Then simply tie this section of string around the neck of the bottle.

Step 19: Conclusion

This bottle was a lot of work, but in the end I think it came out looking really neat! If you happen to build this yourself, let me know, and also let me know which variations you took. If you think this was a cool project, please give it a vote for the Lamp Challenge, I'd much appreciate that!

Any questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome, you know where to put them.

See ya'll in the next one!