text: Cedar Desk Lamp with Dimmer | Franksnotes
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  Cedar Desk Lamp with Dimmer
  Two years ago I began building ‘STUFF’ out of cedar. I found that I could buy an eight foot, rough cedar, 2X4 post at Home Depot for about $5.50.
  Once I got the thing home I would cut it up on the table saw into 2 inch by one inch 8 foot sections. I trimmed off the rough sides, cut out any knots and imperfections, glued some of the pieces together to make 2X2 inch posts or six inch square sections 2 inches thick or any other size that came to mind.
  I liked the way plain varnish darkened the cedar and brought out the beauty of the wood without need for stain.
  I began building floor lamps and desk lamps. Each made from 100 percent cedar, even the shades. Those very thin trimmed rough sections ended up making perfectly good lamp shade material.
  Recently I came into possession of a small table lamp that was a touch on, touch again to make brighter, touch a third time to make brightest, and touch again to turn off. It soon became one of my favorite lamps until recently the touch mechanism quit working. Touch it as you may it remains on bright. After I could not get the base appart, I gave up on this six dollar thrift shop item.
  I retired it to temporary spare computer service. The shade attaches to its light bulb with a wire hoop. I turn the hoop clockwise, seating the bulb to turn it one. Turn it counterclockwise, unseating the bulb to turn it off. It never had a real on/off switch. Just the high tech touch on/bright/off function that quit working. Now it has a really low tech but effective way of turning it on and off. Very primitive but not as bad as unplugging it and plugging it back in.
  Now I needed a replacement.
  Several months ago we replaced eight 100watt ceiling mounted wall washer spots with compact flourescents.
  The first thing we noticed was the new compact flourescents do not work well with incandescent dimmers. The dimmers were replaced with ordinary switches.
  Not wishing to discard perfectly good incandescent dimmers, I decided to use one to invent an new desk lamp. One that had a dimmer feature.
  I used my fostener bit assortment to hollow out the base of one of the desk lamps. Then I mounted the dimmer inside the hollowed out recess and glued it in with hot melt glue. Got it wired up and presto, a nice incandescent desk lamp with dimmer.
  Works great and is a near perfect replacement for that touch lamp that failed.
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  This entry was posted on March 30, 2008 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Toys. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.	You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.