Cadillac Dystopic Lamp

Step 6 Electrical Work

Now for the electrical work.

Get out your electrical equipment

Dimmer
Appliance Cord
Cork
Light Bulb Sockets
Light Bulbs
Speaker Wire
Raw Wire


The first thing you need to do is wire the lamp.

Take your cork and shave it down with a pocket knife until it fits into your 1/4" hole in the bottom of the lamp

Then drill a hole in the cork that your appliance wire can fit into.

Run the Appliance wire through the cork.

Run the wire up to the electrical box

Jam the cork into the bottom of the lamp leaving about 4 inches of wire at the box and the rest at the bottom of the lamp.

Next you need to attach the Light Bulb Sockets with the Lightbulbs.

Drill three holes in the caps of both of the bottles that you are using

Tie your raw wire to the center of the Socket

Put a loop into a length of rope.  Run it down the neck of one of the bottles.  Tie the wires from socket to the rope and pull it to the top.

Put the 3 wires through the three holes in the bottle tops.

Use the raw wire to tie off the socket to the top of the bottle

Repeat with the other bottle

Make all of the required connections with solder and electrical tape

Screw in the dimmer

Move to the next step

Comments

[kokla]

 Can I suggest something for improved electrical safety? Use a three pin plug and replace speaker wire with appliance cable that includes an earth wireand connect that with your ground wire. That creates an alternative path to earth for a fault current that isn't through the person switching it on. 

Great instrctable, I'm a sucker for making lamps. 

I love lamp.

[Sparkyrob]

You are absolutely right on with your comment.  PopEye42 would be much safer using a 3 wire lamp cord and bonding all of the metal parts to the grounding conductor.  Either that or only plug it into a GFCI outlet.

Regardless, it is a fantastic lamp!

[bigmattyc]

In place of the cork here I would perhaps have used a rubber grommet in the downtube assembly and above that, in the tube, attached a stopper of some sort, like a small clamp, to the electrical cable to prevent it from pulling out farther from the base than it should.  That keeps it a littel bit neater, in my opinion, but otherwise, I love you writeup.  Great project!

[kokla]

 Or tie a zip tie onto your cable, nice and tight so it can't fall through the corked up hole.