Making a puffer fish lamp

Here is the hardware you are looking for. You should find this at Lowes or Home Depot, but you'll have to search. It'll be in the lamp parts area with harps and other things.

It has this notch near the edge. What you are doing is making a hole about 1 inch in diameter, and squeeze these prongs and stick the sucker in the fish and set it so the cut out in the prong gets fish in it to hang onto. Below I have used a piece of cardboard to demonstrate.

A puffer fish is VERY tough. I started by drilling a set of holes in the fish to act as a guide. I drilled more and more holes until I was close to making a full circle cutout. I then used some heavy snips to cut around. I found I needed the hole to be bigger and it was tough going. These guys stink too. You have to be careful not to damage the quills as you do this, so try to be gentle.

Use a lot wattage bulb.

That's all there is to it. The tough part is cutting the hole without damaging the fish. A jig saw would work if you had one.

Here is mine from the top. He's a big mutha, which made it a bit easier, but, maybe he's a bit thicker.

Is that George Cates' "Polynesian Percussion"?

I believe it is! And he's using it as a work bench....!

Yeah the freakin' records are everywhere! You can't saw a fish without laying it on one...

Another (easier) way to cut the hole is a Dremel with a rotosaw bit. Takes about 5 seconds, but wear a dustmask, or you'll taste dried fish funk for a week.

On 2004-01-08 19:38, Basement Kahuna wrote:
Another (easier) way to cut the hole is a Dremel with a rotosaw bit. Takes about 5 seconds, but wear a dustmask, or you'll taste dried fish funk for a week.

Voice of experience?
:D

Yup.

I found a lady who sales blowfish. She didn't have any of the large ones in but is getting more, she sales them for $29. Seems like a fare price to me. I did buy a medium one for $7.50.

When we were coming back from Hukilau we stopped at gas staion souvenir shop that had lots of dead critters, including small puffers. I plan to pick up about a dozen next time for a new project I have in mind. Gotta get them cheap as possible.

Where would you find small colored lightbulbs
to fit the fixture?

Thanks!

tiki-riviera -- check out Display & Costume Supply, they're on Roosevelt near Northgate Mall. They have a large year-round Christmas display section, including a large area dedicated just to single colored bulbs in an array of different sizes. While you're there, check out their tropical display section -- they're the area's source for thatch & such.

Yeah, the fixture takes regular Christmas bulbs, and when you are a lamp freak like me, you have a box full of all size and shape bulbs around at all times...

Swanky, I'm a fellow lamp freak as well. I have been trying to get rid of them lately but it's hard to give em up.
Can't wait to make my tiki room and add these.

Aloha!

This weekend I made my lamp. I cut the hole for the fixture with a miniature jigsaw after drilling a pilot hole first. The jigsaw made it really easy.

We had a fixture lying around from an old nightlight or some ceramic thingy, and a whole assortment of Christmas bulbs. The hardest part was deciding what color bulb to use!

So far I have only spent 69 cents plus tax on the whole project. That was for the eyes, which I will install on Saturday. Everything else was either given to me or found.

When I cut the hole in the fish it didn't have a smell-I think it's been dead longer than I've been alive. I think Puffy has been preserved since the 50's! He came from an estate sale.

Good luck everyone with your lamps!

:drink:

Tacky

Swanky,
Your post inspired me to complete my own puffer-fish lamp. (It had been hanging, unilluminated, for a couple years.) I cracked the guy a little bit drilling the hole but a touch of gorilla glue fixed that.
Now it's just a matter of choosing a color for the bulb.

Bumping this thread so I can find it again... :D

I have always been wanting a pufferfish lamp for my outdoor tikibar, and recently found this web site. The prices seem reasonable for the pufferfish... whether you are looking for a basketball sized fish to make a lamp, or just hang a school of pufferfish (small and medium sizes) around the tiki bar area. I will be ordering from them soon.

http://www.shellhorizons.com/details.asp?ProductID=B1-20&Page=2

If you have ordered from this site before and have any feedback, love to hear about it!

Shipping the large size fish from FL to TN would have been $20 or so. That's pretty steep. Especially for what likely weighs 2 pounds!

On 2005-04-01 09:30, tikiwinebear wrote:
I have always been wanting a pufferfish lamp for my outdoor tikibar, and recently found this web site. The prices seem reasonable for the pufferfish... whether you are looking for a basketball sized fish to make a lamp, or just hang a school of pufferfish (small and medium sizes) around the tiki bar area. I will be ordering from them soon.

http://www.shellhorizons.com/details.asp?ProductID=B1-20&Page=2

If you have ordered from this site before and have any feedback, love to hear about it!

Looks like they're geared for selling to retail stores and don't much care to sell to "individuals for personal use." They have a special fax form for individuals and I'd make sure of the prices before giving credit card info. They also require all Florida residents to send a copy of FL business license.

http://www.shellhorizons.com/order_info.asp

Howdy all. Wanted to bump this topic up again.

I am finishing up my Tiki Guest Room, complete with some Bosko tiki's, gravel art, and puffer fish hanging light. The puffer didn't give much of a struggle, after taking precautions with its spikes. I had a box full of shredded newspaper (leftover packaging materials from a recent delivery), and submerged the puffer in the paper to hold it in place. Using my Dremmel, a perfect hole was cut thru its top, to hold the fixture... really easy but wear a mask. I really couldn't believe the amount of cotton batting was stuffed inside it!!! After using an assorted array of tools found in the garage, I took the advise on another TC posting, and used a bamboo rod, cutting notches into it, and twirled it inside the puffer, just like making cotton candy! Took several attempts to remove all traces of the batting, but finally cleaned it out.

With a little work, it turned out exactly like I wanted. Thanks for all the pictures and hints on this posting!

Ooooh I have a whole bunch of those lil light fixtures from Michael's. Used them to create electric tiki torches.

I'm thinking I just found a new use for them. Now if I can just find some more puffer fish.... hmmmm

I love these lamps.

But it got me thinking about whats happening. Sticking a light globe into a dead animal carcass! (But they look so pretty!)

I've been reading this post to build my own light and I just found a sight that sells Puffers up top 21 inches - that is a grand soon to be puffer light. It's a little more expensive than the one listed earlier but shipping and handling is not terrible for cross-country. If anybody needs a big fish (also some nice shark jaws), check this site out:

http://www.deltonagifts.com/page31.html

I've seen plastic puffefish lights (for those opposed to sticking a light inside a real one)..
They should be online somewhere.

Wouldn't it be better to use a modern LED?
They generate no heat at all, just as much light as a low voltage bulb , are much lighter & you can make a much smaller hole?

LED is a good option, but, A) using the old style fixture you have the hanging method built in. The fish hangs from the light cord. B) It's hard to find LED lights already set up to use like this. I spent a lot of time trying to make a tiny LED setup to light a small puffer to use as a rear view mirror hanger and it was tough. I just don't know enough about electricity to do it. Would love to figure it out though. You could run them all off small batteries and never worry about fires.

I'm not sure how these lamps are called in English, but they use very little power & generate allmost no heat.
I just found out they also exist in very small sizes..

An excellent suggestion. The low wattage flourescent-type bulbs are pretty common; I've seen them at Ikea for pretty cheap.

I use these at home for everything, and they're great for poly pop lamps, seeing as many of them can't handle a lot of heat.
They also come in different colours!

"An excellent suggestion. The low wattage flourescent-type bulbs are pretty common; I've seen them at Ikea for pretty cheap."

Funny, i bought them pretty cheap at Ikea too (In Holland that is) :wink:

I am really concerned about fire safety & i also think a normal (hot) bulb will dry out the pufferfish until (after a few years) it just falls apart & pulverizes.
At least that is what happened to my Spanish starfish lamp..

[ Edited by: Tiki Rotterdam 2006-02-13 16:11 ]

Does anyone here know how to go about it with the LEDs?

Advice here will be brought to life in a big way.

Ps last night i found out these low wattage flourescent-type bulbs i just bought don't stay as cool as i hoped they would..
They got quite hot actually ;(

Those compact flourescents not only get hot, but they burn out prematurely if used in a "closed fixture". The Ikea ones did not have that info on their packaging but the Sylvania GE ones did. I put one in an overhead bathroom combo fan/light fixture and got less time out of it than a regular incandescent bulb and the ceramic base turned from white to dark tan from the heat. Sticking to a conventional but low wattage 7 or 15 W should not be very hot and damaging to the fish if there is a way for the heat to get out (see below)

I bought a premade pufferfish light on ebay a while back and it had an interesting design. The hole in the top of the fish has a short tube of bamboo epoxied into it. The bamboo tube gives you something other than the cut fish skin to attach the socket clips to plus it has 3 short chains connecting to a ring to hang it from. This is a lot safer (and according to code for many places)than hanging the lamp directly from the power cord. A big plus though is the fact that the oversized hole in the bamboo leaves room for the heat from the bulb to escape since it does not need to be a tight fit to support hanging the lamp from the socket.

TikiTikiBoom brought up a good point about the candelabra sockets; they are almost perfectly sized to convert live flame tiki torches to electric. I used the flicker flame bulbs to give the illusion of fire for indoor use. It might look interesting in the fish as well.

[ Edited by: WillTiki 2006-02-14 12:03 ]

Well, we're talking about 4 watts here. The heat that makes is nothing. I don't consider it a fire hazard. I can nearly touch the bulb. And if you use a larger sized bulb, you can touch the "hot" bulb.

The Swank Pad Broadcast - If it's Swank...

[ Edited by: swanky 2006-03-17 05:46 ]

Here's our puffer fish lamp. The frame was a flea market find that's made out of aluminum, shaped and painted to look like bamboo. It originally had a plain white glass globe, which we removed and replaced with a puffer fish lamp from Oceanic Arts.

On 2006-02-13 18:46, martiki wrote:
Does anyone here know how to go about it with the LEDs?

Advice here will be brought to life in a big way.

The most I've ever tried usually involved pre-existing circuits. I've used those little souvenir pins that you can buy from places like Disneyland. When stuff like that goes on clearance, it's great for spare parts. I'll usually take the pins apart, and use the pre-existing circuits and solder in any LEDs that I want (like if I'm changing the color). It saves a lot of headache, at least for me. I wouldn't know where to begin otherwise.

On 2006-02-14 11:59, WillTiki wrote:
I bought a premade pufferfish light on ebay a while back and it had an interesting design. The hole in the top of the fish has a short tube of bamboo epoxied into it. The bamboo tube gives you something other than the cut fish skin to attach the socket clips to plus it has 3 short chains connecting to a ring to hang it from. This is a lot safer (and according to code for many places)than hanging the lamp directly from the power cord. A big plus though is the fact that the oversized hole in the bamboo leaves room for the heat from the bulb to escape since it does not need to be a tight fit to support hanging the lamp from the socket.
WillTiki, would you be a doll and post some close-up shots of that structure? I've got a big puffer, already nice and hollow, plus a bulb/chord I bought at OA years ago (which unfortunately has the clicker on/off switch too close, so that it will be at the ceiling!). All I have to do is poke it through the readymade, perfect sized hole. But I like the safer aspect of the method you described...not that I'm ever going to leave a lit puffer unattended. :wink:

Aloha bruddah!
So...check this brah, go into any good sign shop and ask them for some LED or where to buy them. LED technology is huge in the sign business now and fairly inexpensive and easy to use...
As a matter of fact cuz, you can probably go into the local radio shack and buy da kine fo'shua! EEEEASSSY!

Shootz brah, check it out! Hope this helps!

On 2006-02-14 21:30, kaha ki'i wrote:
Aloha bruddah!
So...check this brah, go into any good sign shop and ask them for some LED or where to buy them. LED technology is huge in the sign business now and fairly inexpensive and easy to use...
As a matter of fact cuz, you can probably go into the local radio shack and buy da kine fo'shua! EEEEASSSY!

Shootz brah, check it out! Hope this helps!

Radio Shack will sell you parts, but they don't know what parts to sell you. You get this LED and some wire and batteries and hook it up and poof! no bulb anymore! I have tons of LEDs, but it takes someone who knows to get it all wired up right. I also bought some lights ready made and reworked them for puffers, but, need more knowledge. I'm sure it's easy, if you know how.

MFD, don't worry. I mean, there have been pufferfish lamps hanging in tiki bars for 40 years with no problems. It is not an issue unless you put a giant bulb in there.

Here's one I built a while back with $12 of Swag from Home Depot.

Is there any way someone could post the pics again on how to make this lamp. I have the fish and the swag kit, but I'm not sure how to bring them together. Those pictures would be a great help! I am hoping to make this lamp next weekend. Thanks, in advance.

Puffer fish Hell awaits all of you!

I'm already in Blow fish hell so one more won't matter.

On 2008-07-01 13:53, Tiki Kupcake wrote:
Is there any way someone could post the pics again on how to make this lamp. I have the fish and the swag kit, but I'm not sure how to bring them together. Those pictures would be a great help! I am hoping to make this lamp next weekend. Thanks, in advance.

Well I've had one sitting here waiting for conversion for a while and had some spare time today, so what the heck :) Here's what I did, maybe you can adapt it for use with the swag kit you have...

I bought the following parts to do the conversion (all from Lowe's):

Candelabra base "keyless socket"
"8 assorted nipples" (insert favorite joke here :) )
"2 couplings" (ah, another joke opportunity!)
Swag kit

The above parts were all in the ceiling fans area. The below parts are from hardware:

3/8" flat washer
3/8" x 2-1/4" x 1/8" rubber washer

Here's a pic of the parts:

This is the trickiest part, I took one of the couplings and clamped in my vise, then drilled a hole through it to accept a swag link:

The parts get assembled in the following order-

• Screw the 2nd shortest nipple onto the lamp socket base
• Push the rubber washer onto the nipple
• Push the metal washer over that
• Screw the coupling onto the ferrule, tighten the assembly
• Determine the swag length and thread wire through the swag
• Push the wire through the ferrule and screw it to the lamp base (ribbed wire goes to silver lug)
• Insert the carboard tube into place on the socket

Here's a pic before the wires were lugged and the cardboard tube reinstalled:

I didn't take pictures of the next steps because they wouldn't show much, but next up was to cut a hole in top of the fishy. After reading the hurl-inducing descriptions of dead-fish-breath I donned a respirator and saftey glasses and cut a 1-1/4" x 1-1/4" square hole using a diamond wheel (Which is what was in my moto tool). Good grief these things have a lot of cotton stuffed in them! I filled up one of those small plastic grocery bags full with the cotton, it was like 4 times the volume of the fish once removed. Crazy. I used a plastic fork to get it out using the previously mentioned cotton-candy-swirl technique.

The last step is to flex the rubber washer so that it can be pushed through the hole in top of the fish. Then he can be hung in his new home:

You can see in this photo that the washer isn't a tight seal against the fish, that's not desireable as it won't vent unless there's some space at the top. The mouth on mine is open (not sure if it is on all of them) so air enters through the mouth and rises out through the top hole to keep the interior cool:

Hope that helps! There's no doubt many other ways to do this, but hopefully this will give you some ideas.

By the way, I was at Home Depot today and noticed they have a candelabra base 4 watt LED light now. It's the same candle-shape as an incandescent, but inside instead of a filament it has 3 LEDs. That would be perfect for anyone concerned about heat build-up.

Thank you! This should so help. I have my fish hanging in the inside bar area right now with no light and he seems so sad without that glow. I am going to give it a try this weekend. So happy!

By the way, I was at Home Depot today and noticed they have a candelabra base 4 watt LED light now. It's the same candle-shape as an incandescent, but inside instead of a filament it has 3 LEDs. That would be perfect for anyone concerned about heat build-up.

The LED lamps are indeed available, but I don't recommend them for this kind of project.

The light they emit is very blue and very directional. The belly of the fish lights up with this alien kind of glow while the top of the fish remains dark and lonely looking.

Your average nightlight bulb at 4 to 7 watts is cool enough to the touch that heat is of minor concern. Unless you are using a very small blow-fish.

This is the perfect set up if your Lamp is going outside.

If your lamp is going inside, meaning it isn't going to get blown around and suffer the vagaries of weather, there is an easier way to attach the lamp....

Basically, string a wire across the opening for your lamp kit. Push the wire aside, insert the light, push the wire back and let the fish hang on the lamp kit.

Decorate the cording et Voila.

Some great lights by every one. I just got mine done and hung. I won't share any of the step by step photos as they are sick. My fish had no cotton stuffing as mentioned in other posts. Short and sweet, it was blown up with some type of animal bladder inserted through an exit area and tied in a knot. BUYER BEWARE !! Also I got rid of the "google eyes" and got a pair of gold and black plastic animal eyes for kids stuffed animals at my local craft store. Kinda hard to see in the photo but looks great. Thanks