It's OK to Call This Lamp Socket a Fat Boy

The origins of this name are bit shady, but one thing is for sure. It's a proud name. Like most industries we have a jargon that gets lost outside of the industry. There is one name that can be used: Fat Boy. Leviton makes the Fat Boy socket and we can only imagine the name is in reference to its large stature.

A customer brought in this antique looking brass lamp the other day with a, you guessed it, Fat Boy socket. They wanted it to be rewired and inspected. The obvious  thing was the old plug on the cord. The lamp parts needed to fix this lamp include a lamp cord, fat bot insulator, set screw, and socket key.

First thing we do is remove the felt bottom. We want to get access to the cord so we can easily rewire it. This lamp was full of something. It was hard and crusty. This process was not going to be easy.

It was time to regroup the strategy and not carve out the mess in this lamp body. Looking at the tube the cord went through, it looked like it had space and we could use the old cord as a leader line to pull the new cord through the lamp. The bulb was removed and the socket was opened. The socket shell pried open from the socket cap.

The cord was un-wired from the socket interior.

There were only two things wrong with this socket: the key was rough and chipped, and the insulator looked like it was 200 year old.

To pull the new cord up this lamp the old cord needed to be cut and stripped. Using the small clamps to hold the cords together, the cords are soldered to each other.

The solder cools for about 3 minutes. From the top of the lamp, at the socket cap, the old cord it pulled out of the lamp and the new cord is still attached.

The new cord is clipped, stripped and a UL knot is tied. It is attached to the socket interior. The smooth cord connects to the brass screw and the ribbed cord attaches to the nickel screw.

The socket cap seems a bit loose and the shade holder is spinning, so the cap is tightened and a missing set screw is replaced.

The cord slack is pulled from the base of the lamp so the socket interior sits on the socket cap. The socket insulator is replaced in the shell and the shell is snapped into the socket cap.

The new key is screwed on the socket. A bulb is added and the lamp is tested.

Nice! Total Cost <$7.00 Total Time < 30 minutes.

Here is the lamp with a Opal Glass Student Shade:

**No feelings were hurt in the making of this post.