Free Chandeliers
I helped Chagrin Falls Hardware do a little spring cleaning and when we were done, I pulled a couple of light fixtures out of the dumpster. I call them "chandeliers" because they are multi-bulb ceiling lights. I wanted to put a light like that over our porch dining room table so I was excited — free chandeliers!
My biggest take-away is how to spell "chandelier", which I will certainly forget soon after finishing this post. There are two more lessons: (1) never trust old lamp wiring, and (2) there's no such thing as a free chandelier.
I wish I could tell you that I wasn't stupid enough to think that this light didn't need to be re-wired, but I tested it for shorts and everything tested fine. Then I went through the process of test-fitting harps (the metal arches that lamp shades sit on) which perturbed the light sockets and caused the decrepit wire insulation to flake off in many places. This caused a spot-welding effect when I plugged the light into an extension cord. It's re-wired now.
A lot of work went into figuring out how big to make the shades. There was no way I was going to make anything other than simple four-sided shades, but even with that, there is the matter of a template that would be used to cut 20 identical sides. I made a couple paper mock-ups of complete shades (one paper mock-up shown below) which allowed me to evaluate for aesthetics and interference. I started with a 6" tall side and trimmed that back to 5"
Then it was time to find my stained glass supplies. I hadn't done any stained glass work since I did the lamps for our house on High Street, but I found all my kit and everything still worked. Amazingly, even the copper foil tape was still sticky! (Copper foil tape is adhered to the edges of glass pieces which permits them to be soldered together.)
The first shade I made was a simple affair with one-piece sides. I was happy to see that I could still cut glass and that I might have hoarded just enough pieces of glass to construct the shades in a unified color scheme.
The thing that has always challenged me about lamp shades is how to connect them to harps. You can buy fancy metal caps, but first you have to find them, or you can use a miserable store-bought spider (the wire-and-ring that connects a lamp shade to a harp.) I didn't want to engage with either of those for this project, preferring to use what I had on hand, so I made spiders by silver soldering 1/8" brass rod to brass washers. Quenching the legs of the spider annealed them (contrary to what happens when you quench steel) which made them very bendy and easy to line up with the corners of the shades.
With all that design work sorted, it was time to make five shades. Those of you who know me know that working a repetitive process to completion is not one of my strong suits, but I persevered. As I worked through my glass inventory, I realized that if I wanted to keep the color palette consistent, I would need to piece some sides using the off-cuts from the one-piece sides. You can see from the leftmost shade how the left and right off-cuts of a trapezoid can be used to form a new trapezoid. They just need a little center filler to bring the side to the correct width.
The sides that were pieced using scraps are some of my favorite shades. I'm happy that I started with simple four-piece shades because I needed to dial-in my glass-cutting accuracy. While all shades came out good enough, my last two shades are my best.
And just like that — $40.00 in harps, $10.00 in finials, a complete re-wiring, 15 hours in stained glass work, $20.00 in hanging chain, and $5.00 in lamp wire — we have a free chandelier for our porch. It's so pretty that I'd like to make another one for our interior dining room. Fortunately, I have a second, matching fixture from my dumpster diving. Audrey says I have to make it because then Bonnie and Will can each have their own. The words "after I die" are never spoken, but are clearly understood. Thank goodness we only had two kids because I only have the two free chandeliers.