How I understand it, my dad made two lamps out of bowling pins back in the 60s. One of them lived on the enclosed front porch, the other was my bedroom lamp until I inherited the Detroit Lions and Michigan Wolverines helmet lamps. No idea where those ended up, but one bowling pin lamp ended up in the basement, where it sat for 35-40 years. Mom gave it to me last weekend to bring home and give it new life.
The base needed to be sanded to remove years of dust and neglect. The hardware was also removed, because I didn't trust it after sitting in a Michigan basement all those years. Got my mouse sander out, and got it down to bare wood.
Sprayed the first coat of white and it looked... bad. It was humid out and the paint was stubbornly refusing to adhere to the wood, was streaky, and in some places, beading up like it was oily.
Well, I'm stubborn too and I applied several coats to the pin, determined to make it work. What ended up happening was the pin got tacky and even streakier. It was bare in spots and drippy in others. I finally called uncle and sanded the worst of the paint off, then applied several coats of white acrylic.
The base was easy to sand and paint. I chose navy blue because it was a warmer choice than black. The pin was wobbly, fixed with a quick turn of a screwdriver. I added felt feet to eliminate bare wood against counter surface. This was a bonus for wiring later!
I was going to paint the stripes on the neck, but needed narrow tape to mask the area off. Well, why not just use tape then? I found red sparkly tape that did the trick!
Next challenge was wiring. I bought a make-a-lamp kit from Menard's with somewhat easy-to-follow instructions. First things first, feeding the wire through the base. This was not easy, it took several attempts to thread it through, but I was smug in my eventual success. Applying felt feet leveled the lamp and created allowance for wiring.
The kit came with the socket already assembled, but I had to disassemble in order to wire and put the lamp together. I smartly left the lamp nipple intact from dad, and threaded down the locknut and harp bottom. The socket cap took some serious yanking to come apart from the sleeve of the socket shell. But I eventually got it all into place.
So I learned what an underwriter's knot is. I'm still not sure it was correct, but I had wiring started. Ignore the chunky white paint, I'm trying to. This isn't museum quality refinishing, just fun and function.
I was kind of in panic mode on the next part, as I needed to be sure I connected the right wire to the right conductor. Apparently wiring is now idiot proof (cue John Bender: "you're a genius because you can't make a lamp...") and all you need to make sure of is you have one connected to silver and the other one to brass. This is the test illumination, to make sure the wiring was a success before I snapped all the socket pieces together. There was happy shouting.
It looks great! Or does it? There was juuuuuust enough wiggle room between the locknut and the harp, resulting in a wobbly shade. There wasn't enough room for me to insert a washer, so what could take up that space? I wound red thread around the base to fill that teeny tiny millimeter of space.
Final product now lives by the main floor computer, a light source to replace the broken fixture above the desk. The light is much warmer and balances light sources in the large family room. And it's a little bit of my dad with us too. If it were Girls Scouts, I'd get my patch. If it were 4-H, I might get a blue ribbon. ArtPrize, a passing nod from spectators before voting up a portrait of Thomas Jefferson made out of nickels.
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