Introduction: Copper Rust Drop Light

We build a drop light which is mainly made of sewer pipes. Since the plastic's "nature" look is not very appealing we've coated it with a copper paint and made the copper rust after the paint dried. The light bulbs we've used are Ikea Home Smart GU10 bulbs, so in the end this actually became a Copper-Rust-Smart-Home-Sewer-Light!

Supplies

  • 5 GU10 sockets (like: http://bit.ly/gu10socket)
  • 6 GU10 220V bulbs (we used Ikea Smart Home bulbs)
  • PVC tubes (take a look at what your local DIY store offers...)
  • 220V cable (we used about 1-2m of white cable and about 5m of a nicer looking cable with a textile wrapping e.g. http://bit.ly/2kzj2BC)
  • Copper Paint (like this: http://bit.ly/2mxQlWk)
  • Oxidizing fluid (like this: http://bit.ly/2mxQlWk we used Nr. 4)
  • An aluminum tube to give stability

  • Some screws and crooks to hang the lamp to the chain
  • A metal chain - long enough (how long depends on the height of your room and table)

Step 1: Electrical Wiring

To make the GU10 sockets fit into the pipes i've designed and printed an small adapter. If you don't have a 3D printer it may be possible to cut a similar adapter from cork. The wiring is relatively straight forward and as you can see it has been quality approved by our quality inspector... Since this is connected to 220V later on: If you're not familiar in this kind of wiring, please ask someone who is!

Step 2: Assembling

As you can see in the second image, we've painted the parts before assembling. The sockets are connected to the main cabling with Wago lever nuts. To make the construction more stable, we inserted an aluminum pipe and mounted crooks to both ends.

Step 3: The Finish

The first image illustrates how the lamp looked like before we made it rust. The second one show the final result, the last picture shows the rust effect in detail.