Thursday, April 14, 2016

Broken Glass Bottom On Gone-With-The-Wind Style Lamp

A customer brought in this lamp the other day and it had taken a fall. The lamp fit their decor so they wanted to have it repaired. While super glue and epoxy do wonders with glass, there are times when the glass needs to be replaced. This is one of those times.


In addition to the broken glass, this lamp has an older style plug and the socket insulator needs to be replaced.





The lamp parts needed for this repair include a new polarized lamp cord, socket insulator for turn knob style socket, 3-terminal socket interior, opal glass font, and felt dots. We start be removing the socket from the lamp. The bottom socket has pressure tines and the top socket is a standard metal cap and shell socket with key. The socket shell is pried from the socket cap and the key is unscrewed. For this illustration be sure to check out many other articles of this blog.



Then we removed the nut on the bottom of the lamp base and removed the base from the lamp.



Next we prep our new glass font with felt dots. This will help relieve from pressure from the glass. It will also help the glass sit in the base and vase cap. The glass is hand made with typical imperfections so the felt helps with masking the glass to the other parts.


We are a lighting shop so we have this special rod holder mounted on the table. You can do the same thing with a graduated steel rod and a vise. Using the special rod, we turn the lamp upside down and work from the top up to the base. This helps center the glass on the base and tighten the rod without extra hands.





With the base tightened on the lamp and all the lamp body in place we flip the lamp right side up and begin to rewire it. First we take the new lamp cord and the wires from the bottom light and wind them together. Then we push them up the lamp rod to the top gallery and tie a UL knot in the brown lamp cord.




The socket interior is attached to the lamp. This is a 3 terminal socket since we have a bottom light. This one switch will control the top and bottom light. A 3 terminal socket has 3 screw terminals: black, nickel, and brass. The smooth cord from the plug goes on the brass screw terminal. The ribbed wire from the plug and the white wire from the bottom light connect to the nickel screw. The black wire from the bottom light connects to the black screw terminal on the socket interior.





With the wires connected to the socket, we replace the new paper insulator in the socket shell. The socket shell slips over the socket interior. The lamp key is attached before the shell is snapped into the socket cap. The cord slack is pulled down through the bottom of the lamp and the socket is snapped into position.





Now it is time to add bulbs and test the lamp. First the bottom light.



Now the top and bottom light.




Back to great and now safe. Total Cost <$120 Total Time < 1 hour

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