Recycled Beaten Copper Lamp

I found an old brass plumbing fitting at a second hand shop and it inspired to try and make something with it. With the fitting and some scrap copper I had lying around I decided to make a beaten copper lamp. I hope this inspires others to try and make something out of what they can find around the house and in second hand shops.

Tools (Some are optional):

• Tin Snips
• Ball Point Hammer
• Plies
• Hacksaw
• Metal dumbbell weights or equivalent
• Scale
• Clamp
• Fine girt wet sandpaper
• Metal Work Chisel or thick metal scrap
• Wood Router (optional)
• Saw (optional)

Materials:

• 1/2 inch Copper Pipe(s) at least 1 meter (39")
• Copper Sheet (I used a copper water tank)
• Stylish Brass Plumbing Fitting (of your choice)
• Pendant Light DIY Kit (in most hardware stores)
• G95 Round Bulb E27 40W
• Wooden Base (I used Macrocarpa)
• Tape
• Bees Wax
• Tung or Mineral Oil

First we need to make two bends in the copper pipe that will form the "stem" of our lamp in a square "C" shape, Sadly we can't just bend the pipe as is, because the pipe will kink and it won't look nice or allow us to feed the power cable down the tube.

So we are going to use a little trick of filling the pipe with sand which stops it kinking and make a budget impromptu pipe bender.

Take a 1 meter (39") or more length of copper pipe, make sure the inner pipe is clean and then tape up one end of it.

Make a funnel out of a plastic bag and tape it on to the opening, then pour the sand down the pipe while tapping it against the floor, make sure the pipe is completely full of sand before removing the plastic bag funnel and tape the end shut, The pipe should now be fulled with sand and taped shut on both end.

I made a crude pipe bender to get clean lines from a round form, clamps and scrap bit of wood.

Find or make round cylinder shape the radius that you want you bends in the copper pipe to be, mine are around 6cm (2") in radius but use what you can and will find aesthetically pleasing. Removable weights form dumbbell are perfect.

Clamp your round form to a bench and then clamp a piece of scrap wood about the diameter of you pipe to one side.

The square "C" shape (that forms the stem) measurements are: 23cm, 50cm (stem), 23cm (9", 20" 9")

Be careful when placing the pipe in "Impromptu Pipe Bender" to make sure the first bend will match your measurements.

Once in the bender, hold the longer side and slowly bend around the round form, while keeping your fingers well away, bend it until you get to 90 degree (you may need to bend it to a greater angle for it to stay 90 degrees).

Pull it out and now place the other shorter end between the circular form and the scrap wood brace and again slowly bend to the pipe to 90 degrees.

You can now disassemble your "Impromptu Pipe Bender" and cut the pipe to size if necessary. Finally take the tape off and remove all sand from the pipe.

An important step is to check your work as you go, to make sure it all fits together nicely and that you are happy with how it looks. Here I just screw the brass fitting to a bit of scrap and put the cooper stem in and temporary attach the light, At this stage I'm very happy how it's coming along.

Using tin snips (or an angle grinder with a cutting disk) cut a section of copper from the recycled water tank, I'd suggest it's over 9cm in width (3.5") and at-least 102.5cm (40.4") length/circumference as that's the measurement you need to cut it down to.

The shade is 9cm tall (3.5") but I cut out a much larger piece as I didn't trust myself to cut it well enough straight off the tank.

The finished diameter of the shade is 32cm (12.6") which works out to be about 100.5cm in length, we need another 2cm for the metal joint so 102.5cm (40.4") is the length/circumference you want.

Cut the sheet down to size and as straight a possible and then file all the sharp bits off the edges.

If you have a flat copper sheet you have it easy but using an old copper tank gives us an amazing copper patina that's very hard to achieve with a new copper sheet.

Safety:

Wear gloves to project your hands.

Choose your tin snips carefully! You want snips with straight handles as shown in the picture, some tin snips handles curve and meet together! These can and will pitch doing a lot of damage in the process. I will never forget the story my old metal work teacher told me about why we only use tin snips with straight handles at school, which I won't repeat but if your a guy your much more at risk...

Now we are going to join the shade together using a "grooved flat lock seam" that I also learned from my old metal work teacher.

First mark and cut, little notches 1cm by 1cm (0.4" by 0.4") on each corner, this will make sense later on.

Next mark with a pencil a line 1cm (0.4") depth on both ends we are going to fold one forwards and backwards to create out seam.

Use piles to pinch 1cm down (to match the mark) on left corner, of one end (see photos for reference) and bend it outwards about 80 degrees before moving the piles to the right and repeating this action, your goal is to slowly bend the metal over, once you have bended the whole side to about 80 degrees, repeat the process but bend the metal another 50 degrees, you should be at around 130 degrees, now using a rubber hammer, hammer the metal over but leave a gap just bigger then the thickness of the metal.

Once you have completed that side, now do the other but instead of bending it outward, bend it inwards, repeating all the same steps.

If you have done it correctly you should now have "flaps" in opposite directions that can interlock together.

Interlock the "flaps" and slowly hammer them together (wear gloves) be care not to let the join slip and keep the rim aligned.

Once interlocked you need to create the seam, there is a proper tool for this, that looks a bit like a crescent moon, I don't have one and it's very likely you don't either, so I used a metal working chisel but any flat piece of metal you can hit with a hammer will work.

Work the chisel along the raised edge pushing the copper down to be flush (on the inside) this need to be done on a strong bit of metal or wood clamped to and extruding from a bench (see photos).

For good measure I punched some dots into my join to make it harder for it to move but this is not needed.

Next we need to make the copper easier to work with and we do this by annealing the copper.

Annealing copper is a simple process that involves heating the copper to change its structure, I tried doing this with a blowtorch but it takes to long, so I just put it on the BBQ and rotated it until the copper changes to a blackish colour, (unfortunately this does damage the patina a little).

Let the copper cool down, it's not like steel you don't need to work it when it's hot. You can use water to cool it, cooper doesn't quench the same way other metals do.

You may need to hammer down the seam again after the annealing.

Now let's clean up the rim of our lamp shape, to do this we are going to bend the metal over, this is why we added the extra 1cm (0.4") to fold inwards, this will clean up our edges and create more interest on the inner side of the lamp.

Similar to the grooved flat lock seam, We take the piles, holding them 1cm (0.4") in and bending the rim inwards, starting with the seam and working around.

This time you can bend the metal further in as we have annealed the copper and it's much more malleable now. I do it in 2 stages I bend the metal rim about 90 degrees in, all the way around and then hammer it the rest of the way. Before flipping the shade and doing the other side.

To hammer the copper I recommend a ball point hammer. A normal hammer will make crescent moon shape dents which still look great but aren't what I was going for. I included a photo of little test piece I did and I suggest you try on a scrap piece before committing.

My ball point hammer was broken but it didn't matter, Hammer the inside of the shade, turning it as you go and checking if happy with the number of dents.

Once I was happy I used some fine girt wet sand paper to emphasise the dents on the both the inside and outside, though the out effect is definitely more pronounced. There is a fine line here, you want the dents to jump out from the patina-ed copper, too much sanding will removed this effect.

I don't know what the proper term is but this is the part that connects the lamp shade to the light fitting. This will probably be different for you depending on your pendant light, so i'll make this quick.

I took the measurements off my light fixture by sketching around it on the cooper and made the length to the diameter of my lamp shade plus 6cm (around 2") to fold over 3cm on each side (1")

I drilled out the centre and filed it down. If I had a dremel this would have been far cleaner and easier so if you have one use it.

Then I tested the fit.

To attach the lamp shade suspender, I would have liked to use copper rivets. I didn't have any but I did have little copper tacks. I'm assume they would be far cheaper than rivets.

I clamped one end of my "shade suspender" to the lamp to make it easier to align the other side, I then punch and drill 1 hole, then feed a cooper tack through (pointy end inwards) but not before cutting the sharp end off a little about a 1mm (1/32 inch) down to make it easier to hammer flat, Finally I hammer it flat from the inside.

I then repeated this one by one for a total of three tacks before unclamping and "riveting" the other side in the same manner.

I really like how they came out and added extra little detail to the lamp.

Time to make the base! If you can get a nice piece of wood as one bit, that would be great. All I had was a left over piece of Macrocarpa and it was the wrong size, so I cut it in half and glue it together. The final base diameter is 23cm (9") and 2cm (0.8") high.

Today I found out my router has a little kit to route circles, never seen it before, until today! You can also use a bandsaw or a coping saw to do cut circles or just have a square base.

Using the router isn't the easiest you really need to brace your work without the bracing getting in the way of the router, I clamped scraps around it.

Mark the centre of you base, Dill a little hole for the pin on the router to go into (make sure this is the worse looking side of you base as it's going to be the bottom)

Keep routing down, dropping the router further down each time you complete a full circle.

I stopped before I started to route my bench and cut the rest with a saw before sanding the remaining edges down.

Sand the whole thing down using finer and finer grit sand paper as you go.

Always wear full safety gear when using power tools that fire out heaps of wood chips, Your eyes are important!

A lot of wood finishing products contain VOCs (Volatile organic compounds) that are bad for you health so I use 100% pure Tung oil and make my own finish.

You can buy pure Tung oil in some hardware stores (other natural oil can work as long as it doesn't go rancid)

To make the finish mix melted bee wax with Tung oil (or Mineral oil)  4 to 1 ratio of oil to wax and let it set.

Coat the base with Tung oil and let it dry, Once dry rub in your home Bees wax and Tung oil finish.

Now we need to connect the copper lamp stem, to the brass fixture. If I had a copper or brass bolt and nut I would use that and drilled a hole and put a bolt through. I didn't so I re-used some old "grub" like screws from some electrical thing. I drilled 3 holes, threaded them and inserted the grubs screws. You could also solder this but I don't personally like lead solder and brazing would have ruined the aged copper patina.

Now to set up the light itself. Drill a hole in the brass fitting to allow the cable to pass though. Then align the base with the brass fitting to find where the cable should pass though. Drill two holes in the base, one half way down and the other from the hole to the rim of the base to allow the cable to be pulled though I used a 10mm (0.39") drill bit.

Dissemble the pendant light and feed the cable through the base, then tie a bit of fishing line onto the end of the cable on the other end of the fishing line add a small weight, feed it through the brass fixture and the copper pipe and pull the cabled through the fixture/pipe while also feeding it in, this is rather tricky and with require some level of patience.

I coated the all copper with the bee-wax finish after I scratched up the metal.

Put the light back together, screw the brass fixture to the base and then add the lamp shade + bulb.

Warning: Writing lights is dangerous and should be done by a professional.

The lamp is complete, I really like the warm feeling it has, that is rather hard to catch on a cheap phone camera (Sadly I ran my good phone over with a lawn mower just a few weeks ago) the photos don't really show the patina as well as they could.

When sitting down at a desk at nice it's quite nice not to be blinded by the light bulb due the the metal shade being the perfect height.

I recommend you use a warm Edison type light bulb it makes a massive difference.

Things I'd add to experiment with:

Rubber Feet! (I tried to buy some but were out of stock)

Holes in the lamp shade could be interesting.

Have fun creating you own version of this lamp! and always be safe and wear safety gear!