Getting Lit

A close friend has recently been perfecting the art of cutting bottles to make glasses and candle holders.  When he told me he didn't have any plans for the tops of the bottles I asked him to save them for me because I had an idea.  My brilliant idea was to turn them into a lamps but I didn't want to just stick with a single lamp, no, no...I had to go bigger.  After picking up a box of bottle tops on our last visit, I picked five green tops (four Lindeman's Framboise and one Anchor Brewing Christmas Ale) that would work to make a good ceiling light fixture.  I'll save the others for some single lamps at some point but for now, the rest of these will have to go back into the box and get packed away. 

My thought was to group them all together in a bunch but after considering the possible lack of stability and materials, I was afraid they would too easily knock against each other and possibly break.  As a way to avoid that, I thought I would try to keep them stable and separate by encasing each of them in metal ring frames which would be individually attached to a central ring.  For this I used some basic galvanized steel 10 gauge wire from the local hardware store.  This may have been a mistake.  The wire itself was pretty malleable and I created the rings just using a vice and pair of pliers.  Joining the wire turned out to be a bigger problem.  At first I thought my little 25W pencil soldering iron and some silver solder would do the trick but I  found out that wasn't going to cut it.  Luckily, I was able to borrow a 40W chisel tip soldering iron and with some flux.  After many attempts and many times redoing the solder welds, I was finally able to get them to hold.  I also learned that I obviously need some practice soldering.

The wire cages were built around the bottle tops which caused some issues later on with the weight of the tops causing the welds to fail.  After that, I used 3/8" flexible conduit to attach the tops to an old steel junction box that I had on hand.  To attach the conduit to the tops, I used screw-in connectors and sawed off the ends that connected to the junction box.  I then glued the connector to the top of the bottle after roughing up the glass with some sandpaper.  I think there might be a better way of connecting them if a 3/8" to 1/2" screw-in connector existed but I couldn't find one anywhere.


For the junction box to connect to the ceiling, I found an old lamp fixture at Habitat for Humanity and removed the bottom half, saving the ceiling mantle with it's angle slightly modified to match the screw holes of the junction box.  I grabbed a cover plate with a center knock-out to feed the wires through.  Lastly, for the lights, I had to buy five candelabra lamp bases and glued them into the bottle tops after attaching the wires.  In the end, I was pretty happy with the result.  I'd like to be able to use some lower profile lights since the CFLs, even the 5W miniature ones, seem to stick out from the base of the shades a bit too much.  Now the only thing left to do is find the right spot for that industrial-alien-lounge feel.  I'm sure the bedroom will be perfect.