Light Fixture - Film Reel

This is a light fixture I put together for my workshop. Im was just starting to set up a small garage workshop and there was no lighting at all. I had recently found an old sign post that looked just right for the job. I also had some old film reels I thought would fit well.

The post I'm using is 149.5" long. This works for me because I want the fixture to run along the length of my workbench. I cleaned the post up as much as I could and then I used two coats of a gold Montana acrylic spray. I bought the paint on ebay. It cost my $33 plus shipping for two cans but I only needed one can for the two coats.

I bought some light sockets at Home Depot for about $3 a peice. they are very simple and had a bold opening on the bottom which made this process much easier. I used some bolts I had from another project, not sure of the size. I ran the bolt from the underside of the post and then through the hole for the film reel and screwed in the light socket to tighten it all together. I did this for all 5 reels from end to end, evenly spaced out. The hole in the post was a little too small so I used a metal drill bit to widen it a bit.

WARNING. This instructable is by no means intented to be a depiction of how to wire an electrical circuit. This can be dangerous, please consult an electrician or someone with experience if you are not an expert. With that said, I simply wired all the fixtures together in a parallel circuit on the underside of the post. I ran the wires through the closest existing holes in the sign post to the light bulb sockets and then connected a switch which is mounted on my work bench. There are several instructables on how to wire a circuit on this site that were a great help to me.

After all was done I realized I was left behind with the reel cases so I decided to put them to use. I had some small neodymium magnets (12 X 3 mm Neodymium Disc Super Strong Rare Earth N50 Fridge Magnets) that I bought on ebay for cheap. I super glued one magnet to the center of the inside of each of the cases. This way I can stick the cases to the post magnetically and use the reel case as storage for screws or usb's or whatever. They also work well for projects to hold screws temporarily, the magnet makes sure the screws don't go anywhere.