An Awesome Wooden Lamp
In this Instructable I'm going to show you how to build your own rough wooden chandelier for a country house.
When I faced a problem of room lightning in my new house, I spent weeks trying to find both functional and stylish solution. However, there was none that could work for me. So, a thought come to my mind: "Why not to build it myself?" And I made it.
The first thing I started with was design. The concept was to make a chandelier with a big enough lightning area and adjustable lightning direction. For some reason I decided to make it triangular shaped (even though you can choose any other).
So, in order to build one, you will need following materials and gear:
(All of the measurements done in this post will use the metric system)
Materials:
- Spruce boards -3 pcs. (4.5 meters in total)
- Lamps - 6 pcs.
- Light bulbs - 6 pcs.
- Wires - 4 m.
- Rope - 2,5 m.
- Decorative chain - 1m.
- Connectors
- Insulating tape
- Terminal block
- Screws
- Fastening hooks
Instruments:
- Electrodrill
- Electrofret
- Electric Plane
- Sander [It is electric too, btw :)]
- Hot air gun
- Screwdriver, knife, pliers, compass, test light bulb
Let's start!
Preparations
Shape the wooden boards with an electric plane.
Plan Your Future Actions
Take a look at what you have to understand what you want to get eventually.
Changing the Form of the Boards
Cut the wave-shape curves using Electrofret.
Bulb Holes
Mark places for the lights, make some auxiliary holes with a drill, and then cut them out with a fret.
Woodwork
There are dozens of ways to achieve the result I want such as painting or varnishing. Still, I decided to use "curing" (or, simply, burning out). That will help me to get the best possible look of the wood fiber and create a unique oldish harsh design. So, I used a hot air gun that makes 660 Celsius of heat. You can use gas burner as well.
Putting Together Parts
Now, let's put together parts of our product with a rope. Just to make sure that it won't collapse some day, I added a couple of screws from the inner side.
Intermediate Result
This is what you should get so far.
Wiring
And now It's time for wiring! We still have 6 lamp to be connected in groups and 3 wires(2 lead and a null) to be connected to gang switch. I used the cheapest and the safest technique to make all of this work together. Two wires come out of each lamp and then are gathered into 3 separate groups(3L+3L+6N). Wires from each group are cleaned from isolation, twisted together and isolated again to make 3 main wires.
It would be a bad idea to twist gang switch wires with these 3 main wires as switch wires are made of aluminum and main wires are made of cooper. Twisting them together will create a huge EMF (Electromotive force). So I used clips to connect them.
Hang It!
Screw three hooks into the ceiling to hook the chandelier. Also add three screws into the chandelier itself to connect the decorative chain.
Connecting the Wires
And the last step: connect all the wires together (don't forget to make sure which ones are N's and L's). Then hide all of the stuff into the terminal block.
That's It!
Ta-da! At this point you should get that awesome, advertised in my title, wooden lamp