Post #640775 by Greg_D_R on Sun, Jun 17, 2012 1:16 AM

There's a good sized thread on making float lamps from the large 12" netted floats. I recently bought about 8 of the smaller 5" floats from Oceanic Arts, along with 4 of the 3 globe stranded floats. All of these come with the netting. The 5" are generally about $9 each. The strands are 15 or $20. In addition to OA, you can find them on ebay, and probably a few places online. The only real difficulty in this conversion is drilling holes in the glass globes.

I bought a 1" diamond hole cutter bit off of ebay, and it turned out to be pretty easy to use. Out of 20 globes, I ended up breaking 1 globe while drilling. My biggest mistake was in attempting to use a spring clip candelabra socket for my lights. The metal spring clip broke one globe and cracked another before I got wise: Don't put pressure on the cut edge of the glass. I ended up using the kind of candelabra sockets that have the cardboard sleeve.

I did all my drilling in the kitchen sink, with the globes still in their netting, in their opened shipping boxes. This way the glass was cushioned and held in place. I dripped water on the drill bit, stopping every 40 seconds or so as I went. Even the smallest 3" globes on the strands did not prove to be a problem. The key is to run the drill at about 3/4 speed, and not use a lot of pressure on the glass. Let the bit do the work.

When you first place the bit on the glass, start slow then quickly speed up so it doesn't skate around, and get your groove going. Use just enough water to keep the glass dust in a milky consistency.

When one part of the bit first breaks through into the interior, there will be a small "pop" that you may not hear over the drill noise, as pressure equalizes. Once you break through, slow the drill down a bit and go cautiously. Ease the pressure over to the side of the hole opposite where you first broke through. In other words, try to drill as even a hole as possible.

When you get to the point of almost finishing a hole, the pitch of the grinding noise will drop.

That's pretty much it. When I was done, I wiped the glass residue off of the outside of the glass, wiped the inside as best I could, and shook out the hole cut piece. Then I sprayed the inside with Krylon glass frosting spray paint.

I bought lamp kits online from National Artcraft. They also sell a white plastic candelabra socket that's made to be used with multiple sockets inline on the same wire. I used these on the 3 strand lights. Don't use that type of socket as the end socket. Use the cardboard sleeve socket instead. I wrapped the lamp kits in twine to make them blend in a little better. The twine also holds the sockets in place without damaging the glass. I'm happy with the way everything turned out.

Most of the bullet shaped colored light bulbs won't fit through a 1 inch hole. I found some 'S6' candelabra bulbs online that come in red, blue, and green. The smaller white frosted bulbs that are flame shaped, fit with no problems.

The smaller red lamp on the right with the great netting was done by tikiskip. The blue lamp is one of my conversions. The painting behind them sits in front of a glass block window, so it's backlit during the day.

[ Edited by: Greg_D_R 2012-06-17 01:26 ]