I've been getting in to a bit of wood turning recently and wanted to update my bedroom light. All it used to be was a standard white plastic pendant and ceiling cover with a plain lamp shade. I decided to turn two covers, one for the lamp holder and one for the ceiling cover. I also saw some lighting cable that that covered with fabric on ebay so used a small section of teal coloured wire instead of the plain white.

Materials

Fabric lighting cable

Wood - I used some lime wood

Sand paper

Oil for finishing

Tools

Wood turning lathe

Lathe turning tools

Screwdrivers

Pliers

Step 1: Planning

The first thing to do is to switch the electricity off at the fuse box for either the whole house or just the specific fuse associated with the light you are messing with.

Unscrew the ceiling cover and take a note of which coloured wires are going where - I took a photo as a reminder. Remove all the wires from the pendant set so all your parts are free and determine the length of wire and size of timber you need.

Step 2: Lamp Holder

First I chucked up my bit of wood in the lathe and steadied it with the tailstock before truing it up. Once it was a cylinder I inserted a drill chuck in to the tail stock and drilled a hole slightly smaller than the lamp fitting. I then made the inside larger with a square carbide cutter until the lamp holder fit. I then shaped the outside to a nice shape and sanded with 60, 120, 240, 320 and 400 grit finishing off with some danish oil. I then parted it off and drilled a hole for the cable.

Step 3: Ceiling Mount Cover

To make the ceiling cover I stated by using a screw chuck to hold my timber in place while I trued it up and cut a tenon to the far end. I then roughly shaped the part up to the tenon before removing from the screw chuck and reversing it on to my scroll chuck.

I then started to hollow the inside of the timber until there was quite a lot of removed and then test fitted the plastic cover in to the hole. As it was too small I started to remove little bits from the inside bit by bit while stopping the lathe every now and then until it was just right. I then finished the outside with sandpaper and oil before parting it off.

All that was needed was to sand the rough part of the cover with a random orbital sander up to 400 grit and finishing with danish oil.