Cracked Black Plastic Sockets Are An Easy Fix

Many lamps today are made with inexpensive components. Specifically, I mean the black plastic sockets used in most household table lamps. These sockets are brittle and easily chipped and cracked. If you are like me and often shop in the closeout section or the "imperfect" type of store, you will easily find these sockets cracked, chipped, and often missing on the lamps for sale. The good news is they are really easy to fix.

As this video demonstrates, there are 3 parts of the plastic socket: cap (bottom), shell (top), and the socket interior. The shell screws on to the cap and can be replaced in a few minutes.

Don't let those cracked, chipped or bent lamp parts keep you from getting the lamp you like.

Anatomy of a Keyed Socket

I like to see how things work and how they are engineered. There aren't too many mechanical parts to lamps and lighting, but the interior of a keyed socket it not something we fix and it often fails. It is always safer and cheaper to replace the socket interior, but in case you are curious like me here are some photos of the inside of a keyed socket interior.
Today's interiors are designed well enough, but are disposable and should not be repaired just replaced. The whole interior he held together with rivets. By drilling a few rivets, you can see the interior parts.

The aluminum bulb holder is separated from the plastic base with an insulator.

The key shaft rests in a slot and is attached with a notched round piece on the end. This piece has brass covered on 3/4 of it. Rotating the key will open and close the circuit by supplying power to the brass tongue at the bottom of the socket. This is why polarization is important. You wouldn't want the hot wire attached to the aluminum screw cap.

These sockets tend to fail when the key gets stripped either at the internal mechanism or the plastic or metal key on the outside of the shaft.

As you can see the socket interior is made to be a single piece and not designed to be repaired or maintained. It is always safer to replace the socket interior. Most often we can reuse the socket cap and shell so a repair is barely noticeable.

Floor Lamp with Busted Socket Cluster and Pull Chain Sockets

A customer brought this patient in the other day and said it needed some major work . The lamp cords were completely missing from the lamp and the sockets were bad. This floor lamp had been painted so matching the color was not going to work. The customer said it was to be repainted so not to worry about finishes. After closely inspecting the lamp we found the sockets were molded to the cluster, so the lamp parts needed to fix this floor lamp include cluster body, 2 pull chain sockets, lamp cord, plug, reducing neck, and 4 lead wires.

Remove the cap from the socket cluster and undo any wiring. Unscrew the cluster body from the lamp body.

Take stock of any parts that can be reused. Unfortunately for this lamp, the socket caps are molded to the cluster body and the socket insulators are completely shot. We love reusing old parts, but safety must come first. This post of the floor lamp body has a 1/4IP thread. The replacement cluster has a 1/8IP thread, so we will need a reducing neck to connect the lamp base to the new cluster body.

Connect the socket caps to the cluster body and tighten the seating screws. Since we added the neck just below the cluster body the socket caps are a little tight. Using a flat head screw driver we carefully adjust the rods for the socket caps.

Wiring the sockets is relatively easy. Using 6 inch lead wires we attached the black wire to the brass screw and the white wire to the silver screw. Tip: If you do not have lead wires, recycle a piece of lamp cord. Make sure you wire the correct wire to the right screw on the socket interior.

Feed the lead wires up the socket caps and lock the socket shells in place. Remember to have the pull chain in the right position on the lamp. Usually the chains are at opposing sides.

With the socket cluster and sockets attached, the lamp is ready for the lamp cord. Laying the lamp on its side makes it much easier to get access to the base and feed the cord in the lamp.

Take your time and go easy. You do not want to put a kink in the cord. Once it reaches the top it might need some assistance. Here the small clamps come in handy.

The customer wanted a special rayon covered lamp cord and antique style plug. It looks really good on this style floor lamp. Trim some of the rayon off the cord and expose the wires. Tie a knot in the cord to keep it from falling down the lamp and to keep the rayon from unraveling. These wires are already stripped, but we will need to strip the lead wires from the sockets.

Using wire nuts, connect the black wires together and the white wires together. Carefully inspect the wire nuts and make sure no bare wires are visible from the bottom of the wire nut. The wires might need to be trimmed, but they should completely fit inside the nut.

Tuck the wires into the cluster body.

Screw the cluster cap onto the cluster body.

Add some bulbs and test the lamp.

Finished! Total Cost: <$ 70.00 Total Time< 45 minutes