Inspector Gadget - Mood Lamp

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Issue 43

The Small Spaces Issue

Buy Your First Home
Southern BBQ, City Style
A-Frame House
Bikes of Portland

Inspector Gadget - Mood Lamp

Two ways to breathe new life into antique machinery

There's something magical about old apparatuses, hand-cranked devices from the prewar era, reel-to-reel tape players from the 1970s, and such. Let these two projects inspire you to nab that delightful but defunct artifact at the flea market and turn it into a showpiece.

by Georgi Belev

Photos by Markham Johnson

A few months ago I discovered this rusty old “thing” at a local photography store’s liquidation sale. The clerk didn’t know what it was, but the shape was so strange I decided to buy it. When I took it home and turned it on, the surface started to warm up, and I realized it was an old print dryer. Since I didn’t have any prints that needed drying, I figured I could transform it into a unique mood lamp.

The dryer is double-sided, with stretched canvas on the outside, a heating element on the inside, and two pieces of sheet metal in between. I used a screwdriver to remove the heating coils and switches so I could see how much space I would have for the light fixtures and bulbs.
Turns out, not much. The body of the print dryer is only 5” at its widest point, but I was able to find a couple low-profile fixtures that would fit inside. I connected one to the existing switch and, for the other, installed a dimmer in place of the thermostat. (For instructions on installing light switches, visit readymademag.com/lighting).
Next I envisioned how the sheet metal should be cut so that light would shine through the canvas. I sketched out a maze pattern on cardboard until it had the right balance of positive and negative space. For contrast, I drew a flowing dunelike design for the other side of the lamp. I cut my patterns out of cardboard and held them up to the light to make sure they would allow enough light to pass through.
I don’t know the first thing about cutting metal, but thankfully there are people out there who do. Michael Curry at Oakland’s Crucible (thecrucible.org) told me that to get such precise, clean lines, I would need to have the metal cut by laser or water jet. (Of course, I spent some time researching other, less expensive methods, but I only had the two original pieces of sheet metal, so the cuts had to be perfect.)
I found Advanced Laser & Waterjet Cutting (adv-laser.com) online, and for $240 they agreed to help me out. I dropped off the sheet metal and the designs, which I had redrawn in Adobe Illustrator, and a week later I got the call that the job was done.
Once I got the sheet metal back, I slid the pieces between the canvas and light source and secured them with screws. Then I hit the switch, and the mood was set!