Post #786648 by Club Nouméa on Tue, May 8, 2018 9:38 PM

I reconditioned an old broken lamp recently and turned it into a tapa lamp.

The old lamp had a plastic shade that had turned all brittle with age...

The first step was to break off half of the flaky, crumbly plastic so I could dismantle the lamp holder and the 2 screwed retaining strips.

The replacement shade was a sheet of 1 mm perspex. This is what was used in two tapa lampshades I had purchased from a furniture store some years ago. It serves as the internal backing for the tapa.

I carefully preserved one half of the old lamp shade so that I could use it as a template for marking the screw holes in the perspex - no rulers required!

A test run to see that I had the holes positioned correctly. it is best to do this before gluing the tapa onto the perspex.

I don't own a professional flat press, but the Oxford English Dictionary did the job of keeping the tapa and the perspex flat while the glue dried out. Ordinary PVA (woodworker's) glue will do the job - it dries transparent and it does not eat into the perspex.

The finished lamp (side 1).

The finished lamp (side 2).

The earliest known tiki mug: "Ruru and Weku", designed by Harry Hargreaves of Crown Lynn, New Zealand, 1949.

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2018-05-08 21:39 ]