How I made my first few bicycle chandeliers

Here's the thing about starting a completely new project: the uncertainty is almost paralyzing. I had decided I wanted to make a bicycle chandelier, and I'd googled "bicycle chandelier", and I'd bought some ugly old chandeliers and some bike wheels . . . and it was still just super intimidating to get started.

It's the same way I feel about scary math problems.  It's the same way I feel at the beginning of lots of projects I start, really.  I've had lots of practice being overwhelmed by uncertainty, and pushing through it.  I just thought I'd mention that, because I think in someways combatting that feeling is the hardest part of this project.

Here's how I talked myself through it:  what's the worst that can happen?  The worst that can happen is I totally screw up and have to throw away all the materials.   And meanwhile, I'll have learned something.  That's not so bad.  

Plunging ahead:  I bought some bad, but still aesthetically fine, bike wheels from our local B-corp bike shop for $1 each.  (The really cool wheels are purple, or green, and I'm saving those for later, when I get good at this!)    Then I bought a bunch of chandeliers so that I could use the light sockets and wires.  (These were ugly/slightly damaged fixtures from Habitat Restore, ranging in price from $5 to $12.50).  So the first step was to get them taken apart.  

In this wall-mounted light fixture,
I wanted the innards but not the outards.

For this, I needed a screwdriver and a wrench.

I find the act of taking things apart really therapeutic, actually.   I think my favorite thing that I've ever taken apart is a chair that my husband's mother gave us.  But a chandelier is also fun to disassemble.  

The next question was how to hook the pieces to the bike wheel.  I sat the wheel on a large vase, and experimented.  Here was my first attempt: sit the swan-necked pieces on the bike wheel.  

This looked kind of reasonable (ish), but ended up being super hard to balance if I lifted the wheel; it tilted all the heck over the place.  So I further disassembled, and pulled the sockets (with wires attached) from out of those gold swan-necked pieces.  This took forEVER, until I finally realized that the screw that connected these particular sockets to the gold pieces was inside the socket, not outside.  Then it took about 1 minute to unscrew all 5 sockets. 

I haven't found an easy way to make holes in bike wheels (which makes me happy about riding them), so I just tried to find a way to wrap the wires that come out of the socket around the wheel itself.  That actually seemed to be an okay way to do it.  It's not beautiful, but it has a kind of geek chic to it.

This next picture shows the a fixture hanging from the wheel, and another lesson learned.  I was trying to figure out how to suspend the wheel from a chain.  I threaded the chain through the center axle of the wheel and used the axle itself to anchor the the chain.   This was before I discovered that chandeliers and other ceiling fixtures have the same threading as bike axles.   

A much more elegant (?) way to hook the chain to the wheel is just to screw the chandelier hook right on to the bike axle.   Whoop!

The wires the come from the light bulbs then get twisted back together --- all the white ones in one swirl, all the black ones in another swirl --- together with the wires from the cord that will plug this baby in.  To get that cord-with-plug, I got a cheap extension cord from Habitat Restore, and snipped off one end.

Then I carefully stripped a bit of the casing from each end, in the standard way of doing that.  

The mass and tangle of wires isn't particularly elegant, I admit.  (Have I said that before?)

Here's me testing the light before I hang it:

wow, the floor is so shiny that it looks like extra lightbulbs are down there!

And here's the chandelier, hanging from the ceiling.  

I've made another one (with canning jar globes), and I'm going to do a few more that are slightly more aesthetic, now that I have my beta version done.  My daughter saw these up on the ceiling and said she wanted one for Christmas, so score!  If they're ugly, they're nonetheless kind of fun-ugly.  Fugly?

It's really reassuring to go from paralysis to delight on a project like this.  I have to do more of that in my life!