A "brass" chandelier that came with my house. I hate fake brass fixtures, they are made of aluminum or something and anodized or painted or otherwise plated with a brass like finish. They are ugly and seem like they will fall apart if you sneeze. Every time I walked under this thing I just seethed with hate. I knew I could do better. So my thoughts drifted as they often do to a candle chandelier I made for a friend way back around 2005 or 2006. It was basically just a flat round metal sheet with three iron bars that came up and rolled into hooks with a ring retaining them suspended from chain. It turned out pretty nice but alas, I never took any pictures. Guided by my memory however I sat down and figured out a way to begin with that style in mind and make an electric chandelier out of steel.
And so it began.
The first thing I did was to sketch out a rough idea of what I wanted. That done I set to work. The first day I looked at the things I had in hand to work with. Some lenghts of strap flat steel mostly. I grabbed about 6 or 8 feet of a 1 1/2 in by 3/32" bar and after thinking hard about how to make this long flat piece a round piece I just bent it with my knee. Once I had a bend in in I was able to keep bending it until I could get the ends to meet up and clamp them together so I could put a weld on them. After I had managed that I looked at what I had made, a ring. Only it was more lemon shaped than round, rather if the lemon had been beaten with a hammer and was far more lump than lemon. I started rounding it out by pressing down with my body weight on the high spots against the concrete ground and converting to a hammer when it was too stubborn to move for me. after a while it got pretty round, but I wasn't happy.
It seemed plain. Looking at what else was to be had I found a length of 1/8 inch thick 1 inch strap. cool. I decided to wrap that around the ring on the outside to give it a striation look. That process went fairly easy, I just tac welded the end on and rolled the ring over the strap laying out on the ground clamping it as I went.
Once it was all on I welded in a few spots with my trusty Lincoln electric arc welder and that was that. But still I needed something else. How was I going to deal with the wiring? I needed something to conceal them. I happened to have a few choices. I had some plastic tubing I could easily run along the inside of the ring. But that idea disgusted me. Plastic? not on my iron. next choice, some 3/4in electrical conduit. Worth a shot. I pulled out a length and tried to bend it up. I managed to do so but it looked terrible. Far too thick far too creased in some places. Ugly. No dice. Final choice, I had some 3/8in round bar I could make a ring out of that and weld it along the inside. why not?
Well it turns out 3/8in round rod is pretty hard to bend into a good ring cold. but being the stubborn man I am I wasn't going to let a little thing like it being hard to do stop me. If I wanted the easy way I would have went to the hardware store and bought a new chandelier. But I digress, I clamped one end of the bar to the inner ring and began to roll. It gave slightly but as I went I was able to bend, clamp, and weld my way inch by inch. Soon enough I had my inner ring.
That was about all the time I had for that day.
The next time I came by to work on this it was time to figure out the bottom. A simple quartet of bent iron arms seemed in order so I began with a small ring out of 1 inch strap. I cut about 8 inches off and with my vice jaws spread out about an inch I bent with little bends the whole length until it was mostly round then clamped the ends together and welded them, there I had my ring. done with no heat. next step was to cut up and bend the 1/2 in round bar pieces for the arms. I cut them all about 2/3s the length of the ring and bent them using the same method only I had to use a pipe for some added leverage to bend them cold. once I had them mostly the same curvature I welded them into the little ring and onto the main ring to form the base.
Next step, Light fixtures. Using the same method I cut and bent little rings out of 1 in flat bar. 4 rings for 4 lights. I welded a little piece of framing bracket into the rings to screw the light socket to and then drilled two holes in each ring and threaded them for 1/4 in course thread screws to hold the glass in place. After each one was made I welded them to the outside of the main ring and drilled a hole for the wire to route through. It still didn't quite look right so I decided to add some bent strap steel for aesthetics on the sides of the fixtures.
Now seems a good time to mention the actual sockets. The light sockets were harvested off of an old chandelier my dad found at a thrift store for about ten bucks. Those sockets, the glass, and some various hardware pieces were the only things I didn't make for this project.
After all the fixtures were sorted out I had to decide what to do about the suspension. should I bend some bars or just use chain? After thinking about it for a while I decided on the chain to keep the design somewhat simple. Just some standard heavy chain from Home Depot I welded on at the joint of each bar to the main ring.
Now for the top bit. The picture above shows what I did next. I faced a problem of how to consolidate the chains from 4 to 1. Some kind of hook was required. Using a small bit of 1/4 round bar I cut about 8 inches and hit it with my hammer a little.
Mustache hook was born. I made two more matching hooks to make a 4 pronged hook and welded them to an old bearing ring I had and than welded the last end of chain to support the thing to the end.
after that was done I made one more larger ring to bring the longer support chains together at the top and welded that to it.
Once I put the Alabaster glass on, it began to look like a real chandelier. Now to finish the end piece. I couldn't let it end in just a ring so I decided on a four bar twisted ball. luckily for me I didn't need to to make one as I had three old iron decorative torches to cut up and take from. easy, all I had to do was cut it out, pound it slightly more round and that was that. I bought a little 1 1/4 inch cast iron ball to cap it with and welded it on. Not bad. Next step, cleaning up, trimming, wiring and paint.
There were allot of places that needed grinding polishing and touch up welds. I trimmed the chains down to about 13 links each and wire brushed everything. Anything I couldn't brush got the bastard file treatment.
Once the slag was gone and the welds looked good it was time to paint. I chose satin black Rustoleum to keep it from rusting as it was all iron. And I seem to like the look of black with the wrought iron look. After the paint dried and I was happy with it I wired it up routing the wire along the 3/8in inner ring and up one leg of the chain. I used some silicone adhesive to keep the wire routed. not the best option but without using hollow tubing it was the only choice. Now came the hanging. Happily I tore out the old bass trash heap and kept the base it was suspended from, I painted that the same color and used to it hang the new chandelier with a pin bolt. I had to reinforce the suspension in my ceiling with a safe-t bar from Home Depot but it was necessary seeing as how the weight load nearly tripled. But after all was said and done and some new florescent bulbs were placed inside I am very happy with my new chandelier.
