Spinner Desk Lamp Restomod

I collect old light fixtures, most of them far beyond restoration, but I still love to bring them back to life. In the first image, I have a steel, art deco fixture that I picked up at an architectural cleaning house. I combined it with recycled LED lighting elements, brass pieces from a chandelier, bicycle brake levers and fidget spinners to make a resto-mod desk lamp.

You'll want to start with an abandoned or unloved fixture, like the deco fixture above, some old chandelier parts like the brass column and other odds and ends in your workshop. The brake handles were for a different fixture, not shown here, the fidget spinners because they were on sale for a dollar each. The lighting element were salvaged from some under-counter lights and won't be shown as this is an intractable on assemblage art, not wiring.

The first stage is to remove 100-years of paint, cigarette tar, grease, more paint and everything else that might be stuck on the main fixture. the deco ones are typically made of steel or aluminum, so don't be afraid to scrape, strip or sandblast them. For this one, I used a paint scraper and steel wool. This step will take forever so be patient.

WARNING: Many paints of that era were lead based so use appropriate safety precautions.

The next step is more fun.

Once the fixture has been stripped, prime it as soon as possible then choose your paint scheme. Don't worry about trying something and hating it (as I did with the top fixture) as you can always strip it back down to steel and redo it. I went with a gold and silver colour combination by using handy gold and silver leaf pens. These let you colour as if you were using a felt marker and is surprisingly easy compared to using a brush.

I did a final coat using an iridescent glitter surface coat to protect the gold and silver lead and to add depth.

I knew that having light come only from the top and bottom would be okay, but I wanted to add a little disco. What I did was take some scrap plexiglass that I had laying around the workshop and sketched the outline of the base of the lamp. I scanned my outline and redrew it using Adobe Illustrator to create a PDF that I could use to have the plexiglass laser cut to match the base of my fixture.

Doing this allows the light inside the lamps to carry to the edge of the fixture, creating a more interesting line.

The brass chandelier pieces are an incredibly versatile component. Anyone who has taken one apart will notice that it's made from a collection of hollow brass forms held together by a steel rod. The pieces can be reassembled in any number of ways. For this one, I want to create something of a desk lamp height.

The legs were needed to provide stability for the piece. Having a top made out of steel means you have to have a base wide enough and heavy enough to keep it from tipping over. I did this by drilling holes in the brake handles and bolting them to the bottom of the brass upright. For extra stability, I suspended a steel hoop from the brake handles. To add extra weight, I filled the bottom most piece of brass with steel washers.

As you can see at the top of the brass upright, the hollow, steel rod from the chandelier creates you wiring channel.

For the feet, I chose fidget spinners. not only to they self-balance the lamp, but they give the impression of motion despite allowing none.

Place crystal chandelier globes to cover the holes where the old incandescent light bulbs one went and you're finished. You've created a unique, art deco resto-mod lamp!