Turn an Industrial Whisk Into a Lamp

My wife works as a professional baker. They use big industrial whisks on a huge machine mixer for all sorts of things. A couple of years ago, one of the whisks wore out where it attaches to the machine. Her boss just kept the worn out whisk on a shelf, and my wife recently asked if she could just take it home to have me make something out of it. She'd always wanted to turn it into a cool lamp. Well, I'm here to share how I turned a broken industrial whisk into a nice little lamp for a side table using a bunch of scrounged materials and some plumbing fittings. It just so happens that everything came together for me to enter this project in the Unusual Uses contest, and I feel like it's an apt submission for that!

*Safety warning* This project includes wiring a light fixture with 120v mains electricity. Be careful when working with mains voltage and use common sense when wiring any sort of fixture that operates on this voltage.

• An industrial whisk. This one was from a Hobart Mixer
• Some sort of heavy base. I found mine at a construction materials reuse store, but a barbell weight would also work
• A light fixture kit for turning a bottle into a lamp, or similar
• 3/4" copper pipe
• 3/4" copper pipe tee, elbow, threaded adapter and elbow with reducer to 1/2"
• 3 inches of 1/2" copper pipe
• Spray paint
• Clear coat
• 3M green scrubbie
• Vinegar
• Soldering iron
• Hot glue gun
• Sander and sandpaper
• Tubing cutter
• Shrink tubing
• Rubber feet

I made this entire project just winging it, so took a bit of time to map out how it would all work. We wanted the light fixture to be somewhat short, with the whisk pointing down kind of like it would be in the machine. This necessitated creating a sort of U-shape with the elbows.

Additionally, I'd wanted originally to include some sort of plumbing valve as the switch, but it was overcomplicated to make. I went with a basic toggle switch that I had laying around which just happened to perfectly fit inside the 3/4" tee with some slight modification.

I was very lucky in two regards. First, that the base I chose - a random heavy weight I picked up years and years ago thinking it would be useful for something like this - had threading in the center for 3/4" NPT pipe, so I could just buy a regular fitting and thread it in. Second, the collet for the whisk happened to be the exact outside diameter of 1/2" copper pipe - it just press fits in there. Some things are just meant to be!

The photo for this step is from when I "dry fit" everything together to make sure the overall aesthetic and size was what we wanted.

The base I had kicking around was a bit rusty and the paint was all chipped off. I am really not sure what it's from, but it weighs about 10 lbs and was absolutely perfect for this project. I took my sander and just cleaned it up as much as possible with some 120 grit sandpaper. It took no time at all. I cleaned with a light solvent, then painted the base with primer, and coated with flat black enamel. I used the hole in the middle to prop it up on a dowel between two bricks so that I could paint both sides at the same time, this drastically reduced painting and drying time.

I also magically happened to have four rubber elastomer bits from another project that fit perfectly in the base. They worked well as the feet of it to raise it up for the wire to have some clearance to go through the bottom. Again, some things are meant to be. It would have been easy to use wine bottle corks or rubber feet from the hardware store as well.

I actually bought the pipe for this for another project (repairing the plumbing in my house), so I needed to make sure that I had enough for that project with the leftovers going to this one. I cut the section I needed for my house from a 5-foot length, and set that aside. Then I eyeballed the height of the lamp from there. I cut another chunk off to extend the whisk out from the base. Finally, I cut the pipe near the base to install the tee fitting for the switch.

All of this was done with a standard Ridgid tubing cutter. I highly recommend to de-burr the inside of the pipe to keep it from damaging the insulation on the wires.

Part of the reason for doing this project was to gain some experience with sweat soldering plumbing fittings. This isn't something I have done a lot of, and I needed some practice to ensure I was doing it right when it came to actually working on pipe with flowing water through it. So, I decided to give it a go. I'll note that you do NOT need to solder it with a torch, flux and solder. I've done other projects using copper pipe and fittings (see my Instructable where I made all of the curtain rods in our house from 1/2" copper pipe), and it is just fine to use JB weld or even epoxy if you have it.

I soldered this in two separate sections - the top of the U shape where the whisk attaches, and the upright stalk of the lamp where the tee and base fitting are. This was to allow me to thread the wire through to the switch from the top. For that junction I just squirted a bit of super glue in place as the last step - if that comes loose I will JB weld it but it's not a joint that will need a ton of strength. You can't solder the pipe with the wire inside, it will melt the insulation!

But if you want to practice this skill, it is quite easy. Sand the end of the copper pipe with a bit of emery cloth. Then, apply a bit of flux paste to it - not a lot is necessary. Push the pipe and fitting together so they are seated completely. I clamped mine lightly in a vise to hold it in place. One trick I learned from this YouTube video is that the right amount of solder is a length that matches the diameter of your pipe, so hold it up to the pipe and put a bend in it so you know where to stop!

Take your torch and move it along the pipe constantly, not holding it in one specific place. Touch the solder to the opposite side of the pipe - when it starts to stick and melt, the pipe is hot enough. Let the solder melt and get sucked up into the joint, stopping where you put the bend in it. And that's it!

I'm a big fan of copper that has a brushed look too it, and is nice and shiny instead of dull and brown. To achieve this is really simple - again, I detailed the process in another Instructable, but the basic concept is to clean and lightly abrade it with a 3M green scrubby pad and some vinegar, clean it off with water, then clear coat it. The vinegar and scrubby really bring out the shine in the pipe and give it some texture, and the clear coat keeps it from oxidizing. This also removes the extra flux on the pipe if you soldered it, and actually gives the solder a nice patina.

I assembled the pipe and stuck it in a piece of rigid foam to hold it in place for clear coat, and applied two light coats - it doesn't take much to seal it up to keep it from oxidizing.

At this point, all the pieces are in place to put the lamp together. Let the paint all dry a couple of days - enamel takes forever to actually cure, I've learned over the years to not rush it too much so give it a day or two before assembling.

I took a spacer from another bottle lamp kit that I had used (you can just buy a regular one with all the stuff, it just worked better for me to buy a different bulb holder) and shoved it inside the hole on the inside of the whisk. It was a tight fit so I used a clamp and squeezed it in there. The flutes of the spacer hold it in place well.

Then, I threaded the light fixture attachment tube into the spacer. You'll need a section long enough to run from the fixture down to the switch, with the rest going from the switch into the wall plug. I ran the wire through the tube, and cut the insulation away to reveal the hot and neutral wires. Be careful not to cut the insulation of those wires, just the outside insulation. If you buy a lamp kit, it has the two wires run so that they easily separate.

If you've never wired a fixture before in your life, here's the most important thing to remember - black to brass. Most fixtures, outlets, etc. have one terminal that has a brass colored screw, and another that is silver/nickel. The black wire (hot) goes to the brass terminal, the neutral wire (white) goes to the silver/nickel one. This is so that the electricity flows through the fixture properly. It especially matters if you have a polarized plug, where one blade of the plug is wider than the other.

Once the wires were attached to the bulb holder, I threaded it onto the tube and popped in a bulb. I might buy a different Edison style bulb, this one just fit the holder okay. We want a cooler looking one, but there is not a lot of space inside the whisk to fit the larger bulbs. Also keep in mind that your switch needs to be outside of the whisk to be able to be switched on/off.

I tested my fixture to make sure all was in good shape before finishing the project with a test plug that has alligator clips on the end of it that I keep kicking around, always a good idea to test before closing up with electronics!

Once the whisk was wired, I pushed the wire down from the top to the tee and pulled it through the opening. Then, I pulled the plug side of it through the hole in the base and up into the tee, pulling it out to meet the top wire. I left a generous amount of extra wire on either to have plenty of room to work with.

The white wires just get joined together - I used an appropriate sized wire nut. Make sure yours fits your wire - too big and it will fall off, too small and the wires won't get properly twisted inside of it. They make push fittings that are great as well for this application.

The black wires each get soldered to one terminal of the switch. I put some shrink tubing on the wires before soldering, then covered the terminals with it and heated with a heat gun. Additionally, I covered the entire back of the switch with hot glue - this was to make sure there was no risk of a short from the hot wires to the copper tubing, which could electrocute someone or cause a fire! If you do something like this, make sure you cover stuff like this up completely with an insulator of some type.

I ground the body of the switch down very slightly so that it just press fit inside of the tee. There are other options for switches out there which should work just fine for this application, this one just looked cool (metal toggle switches are always fun) and I had it kicking around.

From here I just threaded the pipe into the base and tightened it down a bit with a wrench - not too much. I had a leftover cable gland that I tried to install in the base for cable strain relief, but it was too tall so I just used it as a reducer for the hole and squirted hot glue in there - nobody will see it and that is not going to go anywhere. Cable strain relief is important for stuff like this so your wires don't get pulled apart inside the fixture if the cable gets pulled or tugged out. Some of the bottle lamp kits include a gland or similar fitting for this purpose.

My wife and I think it looks very nice! It's really neat to see the shadows that the wires in the whisk create on the walls, and it makes for a very neat effect. Overall, this was a very easy project that only took a couple of hours and was really straightforward. I hope it inspires you to make something fun and random out of an unusual item.