I was running out of room to display my globes so I decided to put up another globe shelf. My brother gave me some metal brackets that were used to hold cables in man holes. A Korean War veteran friend of mine from the local American Legion had an old Maple board in his barn for the last 30 years, said he got it to make a gun stock but he never got around to making it. He gave me the board and I took it to an Amish furniture shop and had them run it through the plainer and cut off the ends to square it up. It is right at 2 inches thick, 9 wide and almost 8 feet long.
I rounded up some globe rings, I wanted the polished ones but got the plain steel ones for now. Was able to find a small diameter light socket at True Vaule. I used one of those flat drill bits to eat out some of the wood under the globe rings so the wires wouldnt get pinched. Wired up the five sockets in parallel so if one bulbs goes the others will stay lit.
Had to move a bunch of signs to make room for the new shelf. I drilled some holes in the toung and groove boards to find the 2x4 studs to bolt the brackets to. Be careful when drilling so you dont hit any electrical wires or anything. I had three bracket set ups with an 8 foot board on 16 inch centers so the spacing on the mounts isnt even.
Got the shelf up, plugged it in, flipped the switch and popped the circuit breaker. Must have hit a wire someplace...? Anyways, took the wood down, spun it around so I could use a different plug in and bolted it back down again. Put twisty bulbs in, made sure they all worked and fastened down 5 globes.
I still neew to cut the wires to the shorted out outlet so it will not be used again. I think it came out pretty nice but I sort of hated drilling into that nice board. I also knocked my one metal framed 15 inch globe off of the work bench while I was doing this. It was like in slow motion, off the work bench, hit my leg, bounced once or twice and hit the floor. I knew it was going to be Jarvised but it did not break, It only had a single lens in it and landed lens up. The second lens is waiting for a new snap ring. I was lucky it didnt break.
