Liquor Bottle Lamp

Hello Instructables,

After I made my Walnut and Aluminum Table Lamp, I decided that I wanted to make something bigger. I came up with a design when I saw an empty vodka bottle in the recycling. In my original design, I wanted to make the base out of round aluminum bar, however I ended up redesigning the lamp so that I could make it out of cast iron piping. I would still like to make this project as it was originally envisioned, however I don't have any specialized equipment to bend 3/4" thick solid aluminum bar.

One of the major difficulties of this project was finding the correct wire. I had decided from the start that I wanted to use fabric covered wire for the majority of the design, and quickly realized that it was either very difficult to find or extremely expensive. There were stores selling it in the USA, however it would cost me a fortune to ship it to Canada. In the end, I ordered the wire straight from China, for about $13 total. I used a website called AliExpress, owned by Alibaba.

Overall, the lamp cost less than $150, and took around 5 hours to build.

*I apologize in advance for the lack of photos of the construction. I will try and make up for them with some illustrations of the steps*

Step 1: Tools and Materials:

Tools:

-Power Drill

-Tile Saw (or other glass cutting tool)

-Soldering Gun

-Heat Gun

-Sandblaster (or fine sander)

-Side-Cutters

-Pipe Wrench

Materials:

-1/2" Black Iron Piping: (all standard sizes, if not your hardware store should be able to cut it)

1. 6' x1
2. 2' x2
3. 6" x5
4. 3" x2
5. Straight Connector x2
6. Tee Connector x2
7. 45 Degree Connector x2
8. Weather-proof Box x1
9. End Caps x4

-3 Bottles

-15' of Decorative Electrical Cord (18 gage minimum)

-6-8' of Cord (18 gage minimum)

-Black Zip-Ties

-1/2" and 1" Heat Shrink

-Push Switch

-3 Light Bulb Sockets

Step 2: The Skeleton:

The main structure of the lamp is made of iron piping. I bought everything from Home Depot, and made my design fit around the pre-cut sizes that they offered. In total, I believe I spent around $85 on piping and fittings, as well as the electrical box. The electrical box is a weather-proof aluminum box in "bronze" colour. It was the closest colour to the piping and I think it blends in pretty well.

The first thing I did was wipe the oil off of the piping and fittings with terpentine. Then I assembled the whole lamp and tightened everything with a pipe wrench. It is very important to make sure you completely tighten all of the fittings at this stage, because if they come loose later you will have to remove all of the electrical cord and the pendants to make any adjustments. I decided not to paint my lamp, but if you are going to paint it the perfect time would be after it is assembled and all the fittings are tight, before you add all of the electrical. You may have to sand some of the surface rust off of the pipe for any paint to stick.

Step 3: Preparing the Bottles:

I used a vodka, a water, and a juice bottle to make the shades for the pendants. As you can see from the pictures, I have two decorative incandescent bulbs and one high efficiency bulb. The bottle that the high efficiency is frosted, via sandblasting, so that you can't see the bulb.

The main thing that the bottles need to have done is have their bottoms removed. Without removing the bottoms, it would be impossible to assemble the lamp and you would also never be able to fit a light bulb inside. I used a wet tile saw to cut the bottoms off my bottles, but you could also use the score+thermal shock method to cut your glass. After separating the bottoms, I used a router with a diamond bit to sand off any sharp edges.

Step 4: Electrical:

The first thing that I did was cut all of my decorative wire to length so that the pendants would hang at the heights I wanted them to. Then I soldered the socket to the wire, making sure to match the black and white wires. After all three were done, I threaded the cord through the neck of the bottle and soldered all three of the wires to the single wire that wraps up the main support of the lamp, making sure to match the black and white wires again. I used heat-shrink on all of my connections to make them look cleaner, over top of the electrical tape that separates the black and white solder points.

The single wire that runs down the lamp goes into the weather-proof electrical box at the base of the lamp. The decorative cord and the black cord that runs to the wall both enter through a fitting that keeps the wire from pulling out of the box. Inside the box, the black wire, which is the wire that carries current, is switched. The black wire from the wall runs to the switch which runs to the black wire in the decorative cord. I used marrettes to tie all the connections together.

After all of the electrical was done I attached the backing that came with the box to the bottom to keep everything inside.

Step 5: Placement of the Pendants:

To keep my pendants in place and run the wire the way I wanted, I used thin black zip ties. They blend in with the black iron piping pretty well, and they do the job. I used one for the top of each pendant, and then a few more around the first bend and the place where the three cords are connected to the single cord.

Step 6: Finished!

Overall, I am very happy with the outcome of this project. The lamp stands about 7'6" tall, so it currently resides in the living room because it is too large for most of the other rooms in the house. I originally bought 60W incandescent bulbs, but they were too bright so I exchanged them for 40W. Now you can view the glowing filaments of the bulbs without discomfort, which was the original intent of having the decorative bulbs.

One thing that could be used on the lamp if you used three incandescents instead of using the high efficiency is that you could use a conductive switch with three brightness settings. You cannot dim high efficiency bulbs, so the switch unfortunately doesn't work for my design. It would make the lamp much easier to turn on and off, because simply touching any of the metal parts would trip the switch.

Thanks for reading!

Comments

[smurfelien]

Did you do something in order to not have the full weight of the bottle directly to the wire (clamp etc.)?

[NathanaelScheffler]

No, I just make sure to use a sturdy enough wire and then make my soldering as strong as possible. When soldering I try and twist the unsoldered wires together, and then apply as much solder as possible, making sure that it fills all of the gaps between the wires.

[safe_silence]

isn't there a way you could fasten the bottles to plumbing fixtures? Is there a size fitting that can thread into a liquor bottle?

[hyperplane]

Does anyone have an easier way to nicely cut the bottles? I don't have a wet tile saw and don't really like the idea to put 2dl of hot oil down the sink for each bottle..

[NathanaelScheffler]

You could try scoring the glass, heating the score-line with a blowtorch and then dropping it in a bucket of ice-water to stress the glass and break it where you scored it. I think there are actually a few instructables that go over this technique if you search for them.

[al_nab]

here

http://youtu.be/sFXngPx3w3M

[andrea biffi]

very nice! I am making a similar project with three beer bottles :)

[AndrewDouglasBird]

When cooking bacon one time, I drained the hot grease into a glass jar in the sink. Shortly after, I used the sink with the glass jar still in it. The cold water on the jar broke it all the way around in a perfect line the height of the bacon grease. I wonder if you could use hot vegetable oil and get the same result?

[lamerc]

Wow... that's a brilliant idea! I'm in an apartment in the middle of downtown without a balcony or patio, so even when I can get the tools together, drilling or cutting things like glass are problematic. Next chance I get I'm gonna try the hot oil/cold water method (in the sink, with gloves and glasses, just to be safe :)

[AndrewDouglasBird]

Yeah, definitely be safe. Hot oil and water tend to not mix.

[WayneEarl]

Heads up for the cloth wrapped wiring: all it really is is paracord, stringy guts cleaned out, with a copper wire pulled through it. Nothing more than this.

[NathanaelScheffler]

The stuff that I ordered has standard insulation underneath the fabric outside, very much like the separate insulated conductors in the wiring used in houses. It is also 18GA, so it is enough to handle the total of 100W from the 3 bulbs.

[WayneEarl]

No disputing that - thats pretty standard. It's also about 2x of the cost of the wire and para cord individually. You can "roll your own" quite easily, at a fraction of the cost. Also allows you to use alternative colors and wire gage then what can be normly obtained.

[Raitis]

I like making stuff from bottles too, so you got my vote! Could you share the link for cable at aliexpress though? The amount of USB and other not-so-needed cables there is overwhelming. And how is the quality by the way? Thanks!

[NathanaelScheffler]

Glad you liked it! Thanks for the vote.

Here is the link for the type of wire that I used:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Vintage-red-knitted-cloth-electrical-wire-copper-conductor-electrical-wire-pendant-light-lamps-line/950756341.html

[Raitis]

Oh, thanks, I might as well order some at that price!

[pip lache]

While in Lowes just get their pipe bender & bend your pipe. Put the Bender back (or not if you're in Home Depot) & purchase the pipe. That's what I do when I'm away from my shop...

[NathanaelScheffler]

Hi,

I am assuming that you are referring to my comment on my original design made with 1/2" aluminum rod. I've got a pipe bender and have access to a powered bender, however the design requires an equilateral triangle with 6" sides, which doesn't give me enough room to fit the bender in. I will post an update with some sketches of the original design.

Thanks!

[pip lache]

How about this to do an equilateral triangle, do you have access to a Sawzall & arc welder? Cut cut cut (maybe a jigsaw or a lot of hack sawing would work too!) bend & then weld up the cuts up with an arc welder - did you know you can make them out of microwaves?!?!? Or get together with a buddy & borrow his car battery & do some welding... all sorts of articles on the internet (& here on instructables) about it. It's the oldest one in the book ;)