Mini Keg Lamp Shade

I had a couple of bedside table lamp stands that had kept for a rainy day and after a weekend away where my brother brought a mini keg I knew what to use them for.

I wanted a bit more flair than just the top and bottoms cut out so I decided to remove some of the design from the front of the kegs to let light through and give it some character.

I drilled a hole big enough to slip in my jigsaw blade and removed the top and bottoms of the keg. It soon became clear that I had messed up. I had nothing to fix the lamp stand to the bottom of the keg with now.

So I made a bold decision and decided that this would be a fact finding keg and made the terribly difficult move of buying and drinking another one. Life is tough some times..........

To cut the detail out I enlisted my Dremel, I tried every bit I had for it on various speeds and most just chewed into the metal or skitted about like Bambi on ice.

To hold the keg in place I laid a roll of folded non slip matting between to clamps fixed to the work bench this made it easier as I was free to shift the keg around as required. The best methods I found were a slitting disc for the straight lines and for the curves a series of small holes using a 2.5 mm (3/32) drill bit and a set of very small diamond burrs to clean up the perforation.

There was one conical diamond burr in the set that really helped with the detailed cuts. Aquaman who helped out with my Fishelf instructable suggested I cut out the axe shaft to make it look like it was glowing, I had to use the smallest cutter I had to get in between his hands and I slipped a few times. never mind it all adds character.

I had to loose the fancy flick on the bottom of the second B as it would have looked like an R, meaning it would read "Hobgorlin" which I'm sure is what global warming sceptics call Al Gore.

I used a work lamp to check out the glow effect and cleaned up any stray bits of metal filings with the diamond burrs and some fine emery cloth.

The top was removed using a jigsaw, I drilled a pilot hole and kept the blade as close to the rim as I could. I used a small mounted point and some fine emery cloth to clean up the jigsaw cut.

My original plan was to cut a Mercedes Benz badge shape into the base with a ring in the centre for the lamp to screw into but after fitting the lamp to the hole I liked how the base concentrated the light upwards (plus less work to do! winner!).

I found the centre of the base of the lamp using a set of digital calipers, marked out the size of the hole to be cut using a pair of spring dividers and cut it out using an appropriated sized hole saw. It stunk.....the smell of the residual beer burning as the saw went through smell like an alcoholics urine sample dropped of at the doctors and forgotten about for a decade.

I removed an inch or so of the black tap feed from inside the keg using a slitting disc on the Dremel so that it didn't get in the way of the light bulb.

That was it! Not too technical but a little time consuming with all the fiddly cuts. Its going to find a home in my mates bar. An added bonus is that it casts the cut outs on the walls as you can see in the picture of my shed door with the axe head illuminated.

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