Chandelier

[Pandora]

I would like to make a metal chandelier but am having difficulty finding a UK distributer of chandelier parts (bobeches, lamp holders, arms etc.). I have found several distributers in the USA, but would be very grateful if anyone could help me to find one in the UK.

Many thanks

[Mary Fisher]

I don't understand this. A chandelier is to hold candles so doesn't need a lamp holder.

Also, if you're making one you make the bits and pieces.

Unless you're just assembling of course ...

Mary

[Andy Dingley]

Somewhere in my bookshelves I have an original (1900's) catalogue for electroliers and gasoliers 8-)

[Mary Fisher]

Have you seen the enormous working gasolier in the courtroom at Judges Lodging, Presteigne?

I'm amazed that They allow it to be used in a public place (it's now a museum and well worth visiting for all sorts of reasons).

Mary

>

[Andy Dingley]

I've seen a few, but not that one.

Why not ?

[Pandora]

chan=B7de=B7lier

"A branched, decorative lighting fixture that holds a number of bulbs or candles and is suspended from a ceiling." source: dictionary.com

Thanks Mary,

I meant an electrical chandelier with light bulbs - and as just an assembler, as you so beautifully pointed out, I need to find a UK distributer of the lamp holders to be fixed to a chandelier of my own design.

Any helpful comments would be welcomed.

Thanks.

[Christian McArdle]

Do you just mean something like

won't help with the arms or other bits, though.

Christian.

[Mary Fisher]

Naked flames ...

I don't mind them at all but there seems to be official opposition to them.

Mary

[Andy Dingley]

I'm surprised this is hard. Now I've been known to make a few light fittings myself, but I generally just buy in a plain brass (often brass-plated steel) lampholder from any electrical supplier (I use TLC) and then the rest is an exercise is tinwork.

Finding ready-made finials and trim could be fun, but I'd start by rooting through an architectural salvage yard, not expecting to find new parts. Relics in Witney might have something.

Coppersmithing is also great fun and is pretty light on tooling costs to get started. Tim Mc Creight's metalworking book, a box of hand tools, a drill (and wire brushes) and a blowtorch for annealing should get you started. Buy an old hot water cylinder from the local dump as a source of copper sheet.

[Mary Fisher]

"A branched, decorative lighting fixture that holds a number of bulbs or candles and is suspended from a ceiling." source: dictionary.com

I can find a dictionary definition which doesn't mention bulbs (is that daffodil or tulip by the way?). So what?

Chandelier is a French word, named for the fact that it holds candles. The English word is candelabrum. Would you expect a candelabrum to hold electric light bulbs?

Thanks Mary,

I meant an electrical chandelier with light bulbs - and as just an assembler, as you so beautifully pointed out,

My pleasure :-)

:-^

Mary

[bigcat]

so would a helpful question to start with. Youre asking for supplies of what we dont really know, just 'metal parts'. What do you want to make it from, wrought iron, chains, sheet metal, hammered copper, cast white metal, what? Give us a fing clue.

NT

[Pandora]

Thanks for your help Christian, I appreciate the decency of a kind and helpfull response.

[Pandora]

Thanks Andy, I'll look up T. McCreight

[Frank Erskine]

Yes. If you want to build a chandelier, you must have some idea of what you want to build, and be prepared to design and make "parts" yourself, otherwise you're just using somebody else's ideas, a bit like painting by numbers, or building a Meccano model to a given design.

If you visit

you can get a lot of ideas for period/modern etc lamps which you might be keen to replicate - you can buy "standard" parts from them.

Please note that I have no connection with them apart from buying a couple of their catalogues!

One thing I would like to find is heat-resistant blue and brown conductors to replace burned-out/charred wires in loads of chandelier-type theatre-foyer installations, without bits of silicon-rubber sleeving.

[bigcat]

replicate - you can

buy heatproof rubber flex and use the blue/browns from that. If thats hotproof enough.

NT

[Andy Dingley]

Nominally a book on silversmithing, but it's a very useful introduction if you don't already know how to anneal or silver solder.

[Pandora]

Thanks for all your help guys, I'll use your info and have a go!

[Stefek Zaba]

How high do you want to go with the temp resistance? RS (rswww.com) have several high-end single-core wires you might be interested in. There's a glass-fibre-covered silicone wire, temp-rated to 150 C continuous, in a

6A and a 15A rating. Catalogue nums 381-731 and 381-747 respectively (though they've just changed suppliers and those particular partnums have been replaced by others, which come without a datasheet). If that's still too wimpy, move up to furnace-friendly PTFE-in-glassmica-in-glassbraid, partnum 359-560 - a snip at 40 notes each 10m reel (or a bargain 150 notes if you buy 50m) - this is the smallest guage in that range, a 1mmsq rated to a paltry 25A ;-)

Rather less exotically - and in the blue and brown you ask for, instead of all one 'natural' colour - is PTFE-insulated wire in various guages, such as 365-795, 6A rated, 27notes for the 100m reel, alleging temp rating up to 200C.

The exotics mentioned first are under Cable&Connectors -> Cables -> Specialised Industrial Wires and Cables; the more useful ones (and there's quite a range) are at Cable&Connectors -> Cables -> Equipment Wire, in several subsections, most of which mentions "high temperature" or similar.

HTH - and keeps your theatres safe ;-)

[Mary Fisher]

[Stefek Zaba]

Far short of that, Mary - just too much time spent with an RS catalogue ;-)

The other 'biggies' - farnell.co.uk being the obvious one - also stock this sort of wire.