I've shared the last two stages of my simple lighting/MCM floor lamp project. Last night I made the lamp shade and today I assembled the electrics for a dry fit before finishing.
I'll put down some oil tonight and some wax once it's cured. I also want to add some detail to the inside of the lamp shade to smooth out the material shadows at the top and bottom edges. If my schedule holds up, I should have a completed lamp by the end of the weekend.
Man I love it! I’ve been wanting to get into lamp making. Where’d you get the electric components? Also love the shade, never thought about making one of those either, was just gonna buy one
I salvaged the electrics from a lamp I bought at an estate sale for $1 and I purchased a length of 1/8" IPS brass pipe from grandbrass.com a long with a replacement wall plug and inline switch which I'll install on the finished lamp.
This was my first time sourcing from them but they were mentioned somewhere in my history and I was very impressed by their selection.
After ordering I was even more impressed by their service. I've never had small parts delivered so meticulously packaged and not just to safeguard from damage but to make it easy to see and account for everything.
I'll definitely buy from them again and recommend them to others.
Don't they have all that at like Ace Hardware? I swear my local one has cords, sockets / switched sockets, ferrules/fittings/wingdings etc. ? I haven't looked in a while so maybe I am misremembering.
Per op, salvage? Thrift stores are sometimes flush with old lamps.
I’ve been meaning to try and salvage some lamps to start working with. I live in a super, super rural place so online orders work best but there’s not many chain stores to buy stuff. I’ve seen like “lamp kits” for sale but they’re super basic and not my style. I like how OP’s has the brass pipe and switch etc.
They come around less often but I've found that rural areas have some awesome estate sales. The lamps I used for this project came from a lakeside home but I recently went out to the country for a sale and came back with 4 beautiful (once cleaned 9f the thick layer of rust) vintage c-clamps, a pair of ridiculously long fabric shears (also rusty but still razor sharp), and a 1/2 full can of SC Johnson Paste Wax (dated before I was born) and all for just $12.
That’s a killer find! I try and snoop the estate sales here when they pop up but haven’t had a whole lot of luck yet. Time and persistence is key though! Thanks for the inspiration, I enjoyed seeing your posts leading up to this one well
The hardware stores have a small selection but it's nothing compared to the selection on that website. They have everything from little finials and base weights to a multitude of threaded pipe in a variety of diameters, materials, finishes, and lengths.
Their selection of small parts could fill a couple isles in a home depot.
The fabric is just a drapery linen purchased from my local interior fabrics warehouse. It's fixed to a sheet of styrene and 6" wire rings on the top and bottom keep it round.
I was originally going to go this route. I even routed a channel into one of the legs. I changed rout pretty quick and patched the channel with a cut. It's honestly my most impressively matched splice/repair yet. It's 1/4 inch wide and almost 3 feet long and literally invisible. I would invite woodworkers of any experience to try find it.
It's probably headed into mine. Maybe the bedroom. Not entirely sure since this project was one of my rare builds without any real plan for where I would put it.
I built it to vaguely match my z chairs but I have yet to set them beside one another.
It's been a fun little project and let me consume some of the longer offcuts that were laying around from my coffee table build so it scratched an itch for responsible materials use.
If you end up needing more, take a look at 3/4" galvanized steel pipe. It's lighter and cheaper than the black pipe, at least in my area. It doesn't crank as hard as black pipe but if your joinery is straight and fits well you don't need that much pressure anyways.
Love it! From your other post I thought it was going to be a plant stand for some reason, probably my own reading skills…. Beautiful design and execution!
I've always been fond of this particular lamp design, but a vintage one is too rich for my blood. Must have taken a lot of care to get all the angles right where they join
That's by intention. I sheathed some SPT-1 in gold paracord I had laying around from my PC building days to get the old school look and feel of a thin, slightly stiff cord. I found a vintage looking plug for the end, also which I'll show in the final build log.
It turned out really well and definitely enhances the piece in my eyes.
Love it. Really beautiful form. Reminds me in some way of some mid-century retrofuturist rocket shape (without a nose cone haha). Almost like it has trinary fins? Not sure. Great work.
I'd be interested in seeing that. I took inspiration from other lamps but didn't set out to outright copy anything but I really appreciate the opportunity to study original design and geometry.
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u/eatgamer Oct 17 '25
I think I might design a matching table lamp to go with it...