Becky Jean Project 2

Becky Barse-Nye 

DIY Lighting Fixture 

Lighting Tech 2

Lighting on a Budget

Have you ever wondered what it would be like for a carpenter to take a lighting tech class? Welcome to my blog! This blog will feature my projects for my Lighting Tech 2 class and I am so excited to feature this project first. Continue reading to find out the process I went through to make a functioning lighting fixture out of nothing. 

The Guidelines 

The project guidelines were very loose, the only requirements were that the light needed to be able to dim and focus (pan/tilt). Each student then had the ability to make their fixture out of anything they wanted, staying within the budget. 

Initial Thoughts 

I started thinking about this project before classes even started for the semester. I had seen students before me work on this project, and I thought it was so cool that decided to enroll in the class. Having never done anything like this before, I knew I was in a little over my head, but I knew I had a great list of resources to help me figure it out. 

I started out with a list of everything I knew I needed. 

• A lamp
• Dimmer 
• Wire
• Socket
• A shell of some kind 

Having that list I headed to home depot. At this point I still had no idea how I would create a way to plug my lamp into the board, so I thought I needed to buy my own dimmer switch. 

Shopping

I headed to home depot with no idea what I was looking for. I had no idea if it mattered what wattage my lamp was, but I knew it needed to be dimmable and I knew I wanted a PAR lamp.

Having spent way too long, and having made way too many frantic phone calls to friends, I picked out a lamp I knew would work (75 Watt PAR30S FLD). With that in hand I wandered around Home Depot even more lost than I was for the lamp. After having no luck myself, I explained the project to one of the workers. He was instantly excited and proceeded to walk me through the store, showing me different methods of how I could wire everything. I left Home Depot with a solid understanding of how to wire everything together but woah! who knew a lamp, wire, socket, and dimmer could be so expensive? I left Home Depot having spent $30 of my $40 budget. 

With only $10 I headed to Walmart to buy what I would need for the shell. For the shell I decided that I wanted 2 cans of some kind, one to hold the socket, lamp and dimmer, and then an outer shell to attach the clamp to (and hide the ugliness of the inner shell). With $10, my options were limited. I decided to go with a huge bulk can of corm for my inner shell. I wanted the inner shell to be metal so that my lamp would not damage it if it got too hot. That ate up another $4 of my budget, so I was really strapped for the outer shell. 

I ended up not being able to find anything at Walmart that would work for my outer shell, so I went home to assemble everything I had. Once it was all assembled, I decided to build an outer shell out of materials I had around my apartment already. It was all together and ready for class, until my cat decided he thought it'd look better on the floor. 

The Incident 

I wake up for class excited with my project, but when I went to get it, I had noticed my cats interior design ideas broke my project. The only bad damage was done to my outer shell, my inner shell was still intact (thank you hot clue and gaff tape). While I was sad about the incident, I knew that it was no use sulking over my loss, and I went to work to plan something else. 

DIY Fixture #2

Time for a new idea. $6 left in my budget, I headed to the dollar store. There I found a trashcan that I knew would be perfect with some modification. I headed back to Home Depot to pick up 2 pieces of bracket to create a tilt focus spot. 

Assembly 

I went back to work using my roommates tools and remade my outer shell. Once I had all of the pieces assembled, there was only one requirement let for me to complete, the pan focus aspect. I had no idea what I was going to use. I had nothing left in my budget so I knew that I needed to get pretty creative. I thought through a few things and how I could achieve them, but then the answer showed itself to me- decorative curtain ties (pictured below). The curtain ties I have in my room are able to spin with some force and then it sits where it's left. This was going to be perfect, and so I went to work to get that added onto the outer shell. 

The Finished Product

Unfortunately, the new outer shell was not strong enough to hold the dimmer, so I took that out of the system, but heres how it looked before that happened! 

Once I removed the dimmer, I was happy with the final outcome. I added some screws and a string to help with the tilt focus, as my fixture was still back heavy, but that solution worked wonderfully. Here is a picture of the finished product! 

Final Thoughts 

Overall, I really enjoyed this project. I learned a lot more about wiring your own fixture, and I loved the challenge of figuring out how to meet all of the project requirements using my budget. This was a project I would not mind visiting again and improving my fixture until it was perfect.