How to turn your old liquor bottles into desk lamps

This tutorial is a rough guide to creating a home made electrical good. I am in no way responsible for your electrical burns, sliced fingers or ruining your mothers favourite glass vase as practise. That said, every step I outline in this tutorial is relatively safe if you follow the instructions with a little common sense and a mind to what you're doing.

Now we're done with the disclaimer bit, go buy yourself some thick leather gloves and some safety specs, cheap stuff will do but just go do it. I know, I never use safety gear when I'm drilling metal or wood but you're about to drill through a piece of glass at several hundred RPM. Somewhere a risk assesor is bleeding from the ears already. Don't argue with me, they're your fingers and eyes, protect them as such!

Things you will need

Gloves
Eye protection
Your bottle of choice (I reccomend 70cl/1 litre bottles for the sake of scale and the extra weight)
The kitchen sink
A few old towels
A 10/12mm rubber grommet
A wine bottle stopper/optic seal
A length of 10mm threaded tubing
A rechargeable drill
An appropriate length of dual/tri-core electrical wire
Your lamp fitting and shade of choice
Tweezers
Screwdriver
WD40
Duct tape
freezer/greaseproof paper
And finally a 5mm and a 12mm Tungsten/Diamond core drill bit.

Step 1

Once you've rinsed out your bottle, take a look at it and work out where you want your cable to run out at the rear. Are there any ridges in the glass? There is one on the Jack Daniels bottle we're using as you can see, right inbetween the label and the base. It's not a problem but keep that in mind when you're thinking about your drill RPM later on, along with any seams or joins in the glass.

Comments

[Penolopy Bulnick]

Thanks for sharing how to make these :)

[Hank_2k]

No problem, being the first tutorial I've written here I just hope it's up to scratch! I'm quite looking forward to seeing what others come up with..