Today in the shop (lighter light lets this work)
Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2016 6:55 pm
A few weeks back I was at a Menard's store and saw these LED lamps marked down to $15. I decided to take a few and try them out.
Turns out the cardboard box weighs as much as the lamps do???? Seeing how light they were I hatched this plan to mount one over my shopsmith.
When I have the garage door open it blocks the ceiling mounted lamps, sometimes that is OK as I'm getting outside light. Other times like on cloudy days or toward evening it not so OK.
The second issue I have is when I turning, one of the few things I can do in the garage the light is not great from just the ceiling lamps so I have to add more light or make do.
So the plan was to come up with a way of mounting the lamp lower then the garage door and still not get in the way of things. Obviously hanging from the ceiling was out. But since these lamps are so light why not cantilever them out from the metal shelf I have sitting there anyway???
This is not earth shattering but the older fixtures and bulbs would have been a major effort to hang and support. These being so light I opted to use a cut off piece of plywood and let them hang from that.
Lets back up a moment and add some pictures to the story. Here is one of the lamp and the piece of plywood.
The whole lamp is just 46-1/2" long. I left 18" as the support end and cantilevered the remaining. I used two 1/4" fasteners with large washers to keep the heads from coming through the metal shelf openings. Wing nuts on the other side so it can be removed quickly if need be.
Two old mending strips were attached at the lamp attachment points.
Now this was the part I really like about how this works. Ready for it?
The lamps have these studs stick out where the chain would normally hook up, but they also work just like what is shown. So pretty simple to remove the lamp when needed.
This is the metal shelf with the support hanging out. You can see the mounting hardware and how it works with the shelf. The plywood is the same width of the metal shelf.
Attached the lamp with the two pins and plugged it in and there was light, yea the pull chain had been left in the on position. The off position also works.
So one last picture showing where it is in relation to the shopsmith.
Ed
Turns out the cardboard box weighs as much as the lamps do???? Seeing how light they were I hatched this plan to mount one over my shopsmith.
When I have the garage door open it blocks the ceiling mounted lamps, sometimes that is OK as I'm getting outside light. Other times like on cloudy days or toward evening it not so OK.
The second issue I have is when I turning, one of the few things I can do in the garage the light is not great from just the ceiling lamps so I have to add more light or make do.
So the plan was to come up with a way of mounting the lamp lower then the garage door and still not get in the way of things. Obviously hanging from the ceiling was out. But since these lamps are so light why not cantilever them out from the metal shelf I have sitting there anyway???
This is not earth shattering but the older fixtures and bulbs would have been a major effort to hang and support. These being so light I opted to use a cut off piece of plywood and let them hang from that.
Lets back up a moment and add some pictures to the story. Here is one of the lamp and the piece of plywood.
- 20161110_160908_1478819737955_resized.jpg (404.16 KiB) Viewed 1952 times
Two old mending strips were attached at the lamp attachment points.
- 20161110_160922_1478819739109_resized.jpg (240 KiB) Viewed 1952 times
- 20161110_161002_1478819739880_resized.jpg (162.96 KiB) Viewed 1952 times
This is the metal shelf with the support hanging out. You can see the mounting hardware and how it works with the shelf. The plywood is the same width of the metal shelf.
- 20161110_161513_1478819792200_resized.jpg (232.41 KiB) Viewed 1952 times
- 20161110_161522_1478819793219_resized.jpg (170.17 KiB) Viewed 1952 times
- 20161110_162022_1478819794021_resized.jpg (207.77 KiB) Viewed 1952 times
- 20161110_162035_1478819794854_resized.jpg (110.14 KiB) Viewed 1952 times