creating a kitchen light from used copper water tank

One of universal cloud cover's first lighting design briefs was to somehow re-purpose an old used copper tank and make it into a beautiful light fitting. The cutting of the tank was easy, a grinder with cutting thin disc ( i love them), motorcycle helmet and pair of gloves made short work of it. I also had some copper pipe that was cut out of the flat during renovations, so this was soldered onto the top give enough of a drop from the very high ceiling in the Glasgow tenement flat.

So far so good, but there were a couple if issues. Trips to electrical suppliers to inquire about lamp holders that would fit into copper plumbing pipe resulted in this:

So, I had to improvise. I discovered that you can get lampholders with a 20mm threaded entry aslo the 20mm thread from steel conduit will fit into standard couplings for 22mm copper pluming pipe.

So with a little soldering the threaded copper was secured in the copper pipe and then my 20mm lampholder was fixed onto the threaded steel conduit and screwed into the copper coupling. Boom.

Next problem was finding a ceiling rose to house the electrical fittings. I wanted to make this safe with a solid earth connection. I thought I'd try the Glasgow electrical contractors again, then I decided not to bother.. So I made my own ceiling rose out of the off cut of copper.

This is made of a thin strip and disc of copper secured with a threaded copper coupling. Hidden inside is a standard plastic ceiling rose with live neutral and earth connections, meaning the whole light is earthed and safe!

And here is the finished result:

Available on request from www.universalcloudcover.com