The problem

This instructable was made because a beautiful lamp can become annoying when you try to read a book with your child on the bed before going to sleep. In that position we faced the lamp and it was hard to read and enjoy how well he is improving his reading skills. Changing the lamp was my choice, but his mother liked it so much that we had to find another solution.

We only wanted the lamp to be a little bit less bright when we were reading on the bed. So I found a way to mask the bulb light with a shield I made with a small cooking pot made out of inox. As allways, I try to take advantage of as much as possible things that I have laying around. But indeed, it could have been some other material that could be easily cutted, or molded. Let your imagination be free to select the final mask. Take care that it is a hot place, that you may want to vary the position sometime, and that has to be somehow fancy or gracefull.

Anyway the idea is to create a mask with anything that cannot be burnt, and that can be fitted easily to the bulb light.

Step 1: One Start Point. the Cooking Inox Pot.

I was trying to make an oculus, like a pirate eye patch, that could stay in place around the bulb light. And the cook inox pot suits very well. This pot can be cut at several high and perform diferent concealment of light. On the other hand, it is made of hard inox steel. Great for durability, but really difficult to cut. Here is where the material has its importance. You need to work a kind of material that suits your abilities and tools.

Step 2: How I Made It.

I used an industrial rotatory disc machine, with a steel type disc. Which in fact is intended for thick sheets of iron, usually over 3 mm. But the cooking inox pot is 0,2 mm. Your skills with this tool and this material must be very good. Otherwise it can easily jump over you or your hand. It is not only a question of wearing globes or anti impact glasses. Once the tool is out of control it will cut everything on its way. Even bones. I used it very gently, with calm and a lot of time. It also create a lot of sparks that can easily burn your clothes. Use natural fibre clothes, like cotton. Any artificial fibre will be burnt easily. I highly recommend to use scissors for metal or other less risky tools. This can be done also from a plain sheet of aluminum, that later can be bend into this form.

Step 3: Finishing.

I sanded and filed with a lime all the edges. This inox sheet is so thin that can cut easily. So do not sharpen it, just get rid of the edges. I ended the peaks with plier. And bended each leg untill a sort of spring movement was made when the bulb light comes into it.

Step 4: Result.

At the end I put these masks on the light bulbs. Then I guided them all to the position where we wanted less brightness. And, yes. Now the light does not blind us while we read.