Secret Underground Laboratory Recovery & Salvage

What's on the bench at the Lab today?

I'm not sure, but it is unique. Every antique dealer collects a box of lamp and chandelier parts that they'll never sell, too good to throw away and too valuable to scrap. Every once in a while, they find themselves with too much time on their hands and decide to finally make use of some of it. Then they bring it to me.

I've installed one socket in the top and bottom rings, with 3 on the middle ring. This requires welding a nut to short pipe ni**le. A brass screw holds them in place. Everything in life is a hardware problem. The candle cups on the outside are reserved for real candles. When the wiring is complete, I'll make adjustments to the chains so it hangs straight. Then, I'll hand it over to a Lab minion to get the crystal chains as symmetrical as possible.

What's on the bench at the Lab?

Today it's an unfortunate fallen soldier.
This is a 5 foot tall Nutcracker. In his prime, he had 2 dozen lights of different colors on his uniform, including the tip of his lance. The base is made of multiple layers of particle board, which gives him a very low center of gravity.

Water is the natural enemy of particle board and it's no friend of the tiny wires that power the LED bulbs. Corrosion has gotten inside the insulation and made the wire so brittle another one breaks when the harness is moved. Because of the way he is constructed, there's no practical way to restore the lights.

The base can be rebuilt and since he's half of a pair, that will probably be in his future.

What's on the bench at the Lab?

This is a mahogany laundry table, or at least, that's my best guess. It's definitely mahogany and when it came to the Lab, it had folding legs and weighed about 40 pounds. Its likely origin is India, where I suppose a mahogany laundry table might be commonplace. The customer wants to use it as a kitchen island. It needed to be 6 inches taller and a bit more solid than expected of a folding table. This called for leg extensions, knee braces, and a lower shelf. The original folding hardware is fastened to the table top with carriage bolts, so I followed a carriage bolt motif for the added parts. If sometime in the future, anyone wants to restore it to its original condition, everything can be unbolted and removed. There will be a dozen or so bolt holes, but they can call that character.

A "basket case" is usually considered a hopeless situation, but the Lab never loses hope.

The Basket of Pearls style chandelier is a hemisphere of crystal chains with the lights inside. It's an invention of the gas light era. Early gas lights were a small improvement over oil lamps. They flickered and made just as much smoke. The invention of the gas mantle saved gas lights from the "nice try" trash bin of history. The gas mantle is a science lesson in itself, but if you've ever seen a Coleman Camp lantern, that's a gas mantle lamp. It's a bright white light and it was a great boon to the crystal industry. The mantle light extended the gas light era until electric bulbs became bright enough and pushed gas lamps out of common use.

Most gas lamps used the same pipe threads that are still used in electric lamps today, but some European fixtures used a metric pitch threaded pipe that's close, but not compatible. This is a problem when rewiring with modern sockets. Fortunately, Lab magic has a solution.

Lab Magic Saves a Basket of Pearls Basket Case in the Secret Underground Laboratory A Basket of Pearls Chandelier come to the Lab in a basket of loose pieces and the new sockets dont fit the old pipes.

What's on the bench at the Lab today? More musical lamps. This is a clarinet and another cornette.

The customer chose marble bases for each. The clarinet has a cone shaped wooden spacer in the horn to hold it in position. The pipe for the cornette is from a vacuum cleaner wand.

As before, no drilling or cutting was needed.

What's on the bench at the Lab?

No cornettes were harmed in the making of this lamp. I've made quite a few lamps with musical instruments. A trombone makes a striking wall sconce. This usually involves cutting the or drilling, which ends its life as an instrument. Of course, the instrument wasn't very valuable to begin with. Most were battered student grade pieces. In this case, we have a cornette in excellent condition. The customer also had a piano lamp he was willing to sacrifice for the cause. The center valve was removed and saved, which left a clear passage for the lamp pipe.