Status: Completed
Quartz Lamp
A local-stone bedside lamp from copper and quartz
Summary
I needed a bedside lamp, so I made one.For this project I used a large lump of (what I believe to be) Quartz from my back yard. Here in West Wales you can find a fair amount of this type stone buried around the place, and when digging for my second food forest I found an amount of it under the surface of a field. The stone stands out and naturally I had to make something with it.
Tagged: Experiment, Maker
The Build
I started by finding a piece of stone roughly the right proportions, with an almost flat side which would become the bottom.
I cleaned it up and tested drilling a hole which would eventually capture the copper pipe neck of the lamp.
It turns out drilling this stone is more than most masonry drill bits can take, (it is crystalline and hard). I tried several different drill bit types, with core diamond bits working best, but still not very well. I found drilling this while it was submerged helped the drillbits last, but I did go through a pack of them.
Once I had some channels drilled for cables, I opted for a diamond disk on a dreml to finish off the rest of the channeling. This worked much better than the drill had.
Once I had the stone levelled and a channel for the cable cut, I made a 10mm copper neck by bending several pipes until I found the right proportions and bend. Then I started to experiment with different designs for the lampshade. I wanted something that used natural materials and gave out subdued light.
I soon decided that veneer wood worked well, and ordered some more oak veneer.
Some experimental designs for the lampshade:
Wired up and with the lampshade finished, I was happy with the outcome:
