Connecting the Lamp Kit: A Simple yet Challenging Project

The lamp kit that I received was surprisingly easy to assemble, despite having instructions. The process involved sliding the kit into the head of the lamp, running wire through it from the neck and body, and securing it with a few screws on the back. This process may seem straightforward, but the lack of a ground wire in the lamp kit required some creative problem-solving to ensure that the USB receptacle functioned correctly.

To solve this issue, I fed the three-wire cord up through the body from the bottom and ran both wires into the box. The green or ground wire was attached to a special port on the outside of the receptacle, while the other two wires went into slots on the back side, which were tightened in place by tightening a screw on the side. This ensured that they matched up correctly and held them in place.

Once the electrical components were installed, I moved on to gluing the lamp together into its final shape. Having already run the wires through the kit made this process slightly more difficult than it would have been otherwise. However, since the lamp didn't need to support much weight, just enough glue was necessary to hold everything in place while it dried.

To add a finishing touch, I cut out two arms for the outside of the lamp using a band saw and then smoothed them out with a belt sander. The first arm was rough but not perfect, so I laid it on another piece of scrap and traced the second side before cutting that one out as well. However, upon assembly, I realized that the arms were too close to the body and needed some extra width, which I solved by adding spacers made from aluminum tube.

The spacers allowed me to attach the arms securely to the body without them being too cramped. The holes in the arms were pre-drilled with larger counter-sink bits, allowing the screw heads to spin on into place as they were tightened further. This ensured a snug fit and prevented any movement between the arms and the body.

Once all of the components were installed, I applied multiple coats of spray locker to the outside of the lamp before adding it together for the final time. The piece that just drops into place was the electrical box, which completed the assembly process. To test the ports on the back, I powered up the lamp and found that it worked as expected.

The electrical components of this project are surprisingly simple, even for someone who's not experienced with wiring. As long as you can wire a plug into your house, you should be able to assemble this lamp kit without any issues. The true potential of lamps lies in their creative design possibilities, and making them is an excellent hobby or business venture.

If you're interested in creating unique lamps that stand out from the crowd, there's no shortage of ideas waiting to be explored. Consider visiting craft shows or browsing online forums to see what other designers are doing with lamp-making. The supplies and tools needed for this project can also be found in the description below, so if you're ready to get started, head on over and check it out.

In addition to lamp-making, I have a secondary channel that's dedicated to behind-the-scenes content, non-project related videos, and more. If you want to see more of my creative process, projects, or just general behind-the-scenes footage, be sure to subscribe to both channels and hit the notification bell so you can stay up-to-date on all of my latest uploads.

Lamp Making Behind The Scenes: What You Need To Know

Supply List for the project

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today I'm going to make a robot lamp that charges your phone it kind of drives me crazy that next to my bed I have a plug for my watch for my phone for anything else I want to charge and a lamp so I decided to make a lamp that would charge all of those things for me I love the old school robots from the 40s and 50s so I decided to model it after that but if robots aren't your thing you can make any shaped lamp that you want and follow the same procedure to charge all your devices let me show you how I did it I started with a big piece of Basswood but you could always laminate smaller pieces together if you need something really chunky I love these old robots and I flipped through a book of them and then sketched out one that combined a bunch of my favorite elements of different robots I roughed out the overall size for this thing and then cut down this large piece of Basswood into a usable piece using my sketch as a reference I drew some areas where I could slice this into separate pieces so that I can make the different pieces individually and then glue it all back together I used the the band saw here because it's an easy way to make really tall Cuts I stacked these back up in order and Drew on the overall size from my original sketch just so I wouldn't get confused as I was working with them I slightly angled my table saw blade and then ran the base piece over in both directions to add a bevel to each side and then flatten out the front and back edges then using the band saw again I cut all of these pieces down to their final width I stack them back up in the correct order to check the proportion of all the different pieces relative to each other then I move move them forward and backward to figure out their final depth overall this robot is probably a lot chunkier than it should be based on the reference material but that's really based around this new work box that I had to add in this holds the receptacle for the USB hub I centered the Box traced its outline and took it to the drill press with a wide forcer bit to remove as much material as possible I used a depth stop on the drill press to make sure that I didn't go through the front face and just made the hole deep enough for the box to fit in I clamped this down to the table to remove the rest of the material and I traced the outside Lines Just because they had kind of gotten rubbed off I used those as a reference and used a knife to clean them up and then used a chisel to knock out the rest of the wood this worked at the top but eventually I got out a multi-tool that could cut deeper and faster this doesn't have to be pretty because it's going to be completely covered up but it needs to have flat sides and be cut all the way down to the bottom I had to do a few test fits but eventually the Box fit right in all the way to the bottom and was nice and snug I used the box as a reference on the top and the side and made some marks so I knew where to drill the holes for the wires to drop in through the top and out through the bottom it turned out that the holes that came in the Box were going to be too far forward and you would end up seeing the wires in front of the robot head that wasn't going to work so I drew some more centered holes on both the work box and on my block of wood so I could just drill new holes down through the plastic and Through the Wood I also cut a small circle on the band saww and used it as a neck for the robot I drilled a hole through this that matched up with the size in the body and the same size right in the the center of the headpiece about halfway through though I changed to a smaller bit so that one side was a smaller hole and this will fit the lamp kit that I've got I lined up the Torso on top of the legs and marked where that Circle was then drilled a hole through that all the way to the bottom on the bottom of the leg piece I drew a little channel that went all the way to the back side and then put it in the Vise and used a chisel to knock out this area this gives me a space for the wire to feed through without obstructing how the pieces fit together I was finally starting to see the overall shape come together and now it was time to clean up these roughs on pieces I did most of this on the Disc Sander but also used the belt sander to add a chamfer to the main torso section I did this on all the corners just to give it a little bit of depth I also rounded over the four outside corners of the head just to add a different type of shape to it I wanted to add a really simple detail to the leg block I lowered the table saw blade and ran the piece over right in the center then I moved over the fence a/4 inch at a time and ran it through on each side I did the same thing on both sides as well with a different layout then using the belt sander again I rolled over the corners of these pieces just to round off the edges a little bit for the decoration on the chest I didn't have any really solid ideas but I had seen a few photos that I liked so I thought I would just go with something similar to those I wanted something symmetrical so I drew a center line and then made a couple of marks on the sides drew some diagonals with a ruler and just kind of figured it out as I went along I made a pretty basic geometric design and then darkened in some of the squares some of these old robots had like screens and different blocks of color on their chest I'd never used a wood burner before but I've had one for a really long time so I decided to pull it out it's got a bunch of different types of tips and I decided to do some tests on a scrap piece just to get used to how it worked it's pretty easy but it can make a mess pretty quickly if you don't use a straight line so I used my ruler to lay it along these pencil lines to get a much better result than trying to do it freehand I darkened out the grid and then filled in some of these squares depending on how long you keep it in one place it does darker it does more coverage so you can kind of play with the shading and how you want it to look I added a couple of more details and then moved on to the head again using the ruler I drew on some lines for the mouth that wrapped around all the sides of the head and then a couple of circles just for proportion I used some of these tips to add some details on the sides of the head and then went back with the wood burner to highlight the mouth I added a big circle to do the eyes just so it would be nice and uniform they actually came out really well now these are all darker than they should be so I ran over the whole thing with the sander to kind of knock it back a little bit I cut down a lamp wire with two wires in it and an extension cord with three wires in it the lamp wire goes in through the top to connect the lamp kit that I got and it's really easy to assemble they come with instructions but it's pretty straightforward I slid it into the head sled the wire through that down through the neck into the body and just left plenty hanging out extra then I just added those two wires to the back of the lamp kit and slid it into place the lamp Kit only has two wires because it doesn't have a ground but the USB receptacle definitely needs a ground to work correctly corly I fed the three wire cord up through the body from the bottom and came out the center section then ran both of these into the box after there inside the Box can be put in place this one was tight enough that it held in there without any other way to hold it in then I stripped off about 3/4 of an inch from the end of each of these five wires the green or ground wire attaches to a special port on the outside of the receptacle the other ones go into some slots on the back side they're tightened in place by tightening a screw on the side this holds them in there all you have to do is make sure sure that you line up the correct ones on each side so that they match I slid these wires back into place dropped in the receptacle and used some screws to hold it into the box this is just like putting on a receptacle or a light switch in any wall I plugged it in and the LED lit up although you can't see it on camera after that it was time to start gluing the whole thing together into its final shape having the wires go through this already made it a little bit harder to do than it would be normally but this isn't going to take any load it doesn't really need that much glue just enough to hold it in place while that was drying I decided to go ahead and cut some arms to put on the outside of this I used a scrap sketched out one kind of rough arm and then used the band saw to cut it out using a thinner blade here would have helped me get in some of these smaller curves with a little bit more detail I took this to the Belt Sander and smoothed it out just a little bit this wasn't its final shape but I didn't want it to be too rough before I laid it on another piece of scrap and traced the other side I cut the second one out but I realized that they were just too close to the body it needed a little more width so I decided to add a spacer and to do that I used a piece of aluminum tube that I I had and just cut down two equal pieces of my miter saw I pre-drilled a couple of really small holes on each side of the robot and then some larger holes through the center of the top of the arms I used a counter snc bit to open these up so that the screw heads would sit flush on the outside these holes in the arms are larger than the screws so they can spin on the screw once it's attached to the body and the more you tighten these screws the more it grabs into that aluminum and holds the arm in place once you place it I took it outside and added several coats of spray locker and then put in the rest of the lamp kit this piece just drops in I added a shade and tried it out tested out the ports on the back and it definitely worked there it is the electrical stuff in this is super simple if you can wire up a plug in your house you can wire this up I'm not entirely sure that I hit the look that I was really going for with the robot but it's okay my kids will absolutely love this like I said before if robots are not your thing be Creative Design any lamp that you want and follow the same procedure to put charging ports in the back of it lamps are a very simple project and there's tons of variations that you can make if you're looking for things to make to sell it like a craft show think about lamps I forget on almost every single one of these videos to tell you that all of the supplies and the tools that I use are listed down in the description so if you want to make one of these everything you need is listed down there go check it out I'd love to know what you think about this so while you're looking at that go down and leave me a comment and let me know what you think I've got lots of other projects that you may be interested in lots of different types of stuff so be sure to check those out this is the main Channel but I also have a second Channel with some behind the scenes stuff some non project related videos so be sure to go subscribe to both of those and when you do go down and hit the Bell so you get notified as soon as I upload that's it for this one guys thanks for watching I'll see you next timehey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today I'm going to make a robot lamp that charges your phone it kind of drives me crazy that next to my bed I have a plug for my watch for my phone for anything else I want to charge and a lamp so I decided to make a lamp that would charge all of those things for me I love the old school robots from the 40s and 50s so I decided to model it after that but if robots aren't your thing you can make any shaped lamp that you want and follow the same procedure to charge all your devices let me show you how I did it I started with a big piece of Basswood but you could always laminate smaller pieces together if you need something really chunky I love these old robots and I flipped through a book of them and then sketched out one that combined a bunch of my favorite elements of different robots I roughed out the overall size for this thing and then cut down this large piece of Basswood into a usable piece using my sketch as a reference I drew some areas where I could slice this into separate pieces so that I can make the different pieces individually and then glue it all back together I used the the band saw here because it's an easy way to make really tall Cuts I stacked these back up in order and Drew on the overall size from my original sketch just so I wouldn't get confused as I was working with them I slightly angled my table saw blade and then ran the base piece over in both directions to add a bevel to each side and then flatten out the front and back edges then using the band saw again I cut all of these pieces down to their final width I stack them back up in the correct order to check the proportion of all the different pieces relative to each other then I move move them forward and backward to figure out their final depth overall this robot is probably a lot chunkier than it should be based on the reference material but that's really based around this new work box that I had to add in this holds the receptacle for the USB hub I centered the Box traced its outline and took it to the drill press with a wide forcer bit to remove as much material as possible I used a depth stop on the drill press to make sure that I didn't go through the front face and just made the hole deep enough for the box to fit in I clamped this down to the table to remove the rest of the material and I traced the outside Lines Just because they had kind of gotten rubbed off I used those as a reference and used a knife to clean them up and then used a chisel to knock out the rest of the wood this worked at the top but eventually I got out a multi-tool that could cut deeper and faster this doesn't have to be pretty because it's going to be completely covered up but it needs to have flat sides and be cut all the way down to the bottom I had to do a few test fits but eventually the Box fit right in all the way to the bottom and was nice and snug I used the box as a reference on the top and the side and made some marks so I knew where to drill the holes for the wires to drop in through the top and out through the bottom it turned out that the holes that came in the Box were going to be too far forward and you would end up seeing the wires in front of the robot head that wasn't going to work so I drew some more centered holes on both the work box and on my block of wood so I could just drill new holes down through the plastic and Through the Wood I also cut a small circle on the band saww and used it as a neck for the robot I drilled a hole through this that matched up with the size in the body and the same size right in the the center of the headpiece about halfway through though I changed to a smaller bit so that one side was a smaller hole and this will fit the lamp kit that I've got I lined up the Torso on top of the legs and marked where that Circle was then drilled a hole through that all the way to the bottom on the bottom of the leg piece I drew a little channel that went all the way to the back side and then put it in the Vise and used a chisel to knock out this area this gives me a space for the wire to feed through without obstructing how the pieces fit together I was finally starting to see the overall shape come together and now it was time to clean up these roughs on pieces I did most of this on the Disc Sander but also used the belt sander to add a chamfer to the main torso section I did this on all the corners just to give it a little bit of depth I also rounded over the four outside corners of the head just to add a different type of shape to it I wanted to add a really simple detail to the leg block I lowered the table saw blade and ran the piece over right in the center then I moved over the fence a/4 inch at a time and ran it through on each side I did the same thing on both sides as well with a different layout then using the belt sander again I rolled over the corners of these pieces just to round off the edges a little bit for the decoration on the chest I didn't have any really solid ideas but I had seen a few photos that I liked so I thought I would just go with something similar to those I wanted something symmetrical so I drew a center line and then made a couple of marks on the sides drew some diagonals with a ruler and just kind of figured it out as I went along I made a pretty basic geometric design and then darkened in some of the squares some of these old robots had like screens and different blocks of color on their chest I'd never used a wood burner before but I've had one for a really long time so I decided to pull it out it's got a bunch of different types of tips and I decided to do some tests on a scrap piece just to get used to how it worked it's pretty easy but it can make a mess pretty quickly if you don't use a straight line so I used my ruler to lay it along these pencil lines to get a much better result than trying to do it freehand I darkened out the grid and then filled in some of these squares depending on how long you keep it in one place it does darker it does more coverage so you can kind of play with the shading and how you want it to look I added a couple of more details and then moved on to the head again using the ruler I drew on some lines for the mouth that wrapped around all the sides of the head and then a couple of circles just for proportion I used some of these tips to add some details on the sides of the head and then went back with the wood burner to highlight the mouth I added a big circle to do the eyes just so it would be nice and uniform they actually came out really well now these are all darker than they should be so I ran over the whole thing with the sander to kind of knock it back a little bit I cut down a lamp wire with two wires in it and an extension cord with three wires in it the lamp wire goes in through the top to connect the lamp kit that I got and it's really easy to assemble they come with instructions but it's pretty straightforward I slid it into the head sled the wire through that down through the neck into the body and just left plenty hanging out extra then I just added those two wires to the back of the lamp kit and slid it into place the lamp Kit only has two wires because it doesn't have a ground but the USB receptacle definitely needs a ground to work correctly corly I fed the three wire cord up through the body from the bottom and came out the center section then ran both of these into the box after there inside the Box can be put in place this one was tight enough that it held in there without any other way to hold it in then I stripped off about 3/4 of an inch from the end of each of these five wires the green or ground wire attaches to a special port on the outside of the receptacle the other ones go into some slots on the back side they're tightened in place by tightening a screw on the side this holds them in there all you have to do is make sure sure that you line up the correct ones on each side so that they match I slid these wires back into place dropped in the receptacle and used some screws to hold it into the box this is just like putting on a receptacle or a light switch in any wall I plugged it in and the LED lit up although you can't see it on camera after that it was time to start gluing the whole thing together into its final shape having the wires go through this already made it a little bit harder to do than it would be normally but this isn't going to take any load it doesn't really need that much glue just enough to hold it in place while that was drying I decided to go ahead and cut some arms to put on the outside of this I used a scrap sketched out one kind of rough arm and then used the band saw to cut it out using a thinner blade here would have helped me get in some of these smaller curves with a little bit more detail I took this to the Belt Sander and smoothed it out just a little bit this wasn't its final shape but I didn't want it to be too rough before I laid it on another piece of scrap and traced the other side I cut the second one out but I realized that they were just too close to the body it needed a little more width so I decided to add a spacer and to do that I used a piece of aluminum tube that I I had and just cut down two equal pieces of my miter saw I pre-drilled a couple of really small holes on each side of the robot and then some larger holes through the center of the top of the arms I used a counter snc bit to open these up so that the screw heads would sit flush on the outside these holes in the arms are larger than the screws so they can spin on the screw once it's attached to the body and the more you tighten these screws the more it grabs into that aluminum and holds the arm in place once you place it I took it outside and added several coats of spray locker and then put in the rest of the lamp kit this piece just drops in I added a shade and tried it out tested out the ports on the back and it definitely worked there it is the electrical stuff in this is super simple if you can wire up a plug in your house you can wire this up I'm not entirely sure that I hit the look that I was really going for with the robot but it's okay my kids will absolutely love this like I said before if robots are not your thing be Creative Design any lamp that you want and follow the same procedure to put charging ports in the back of it lamps are a very simple project and there's tons of variations that you can make if you're looking for things to make to sell it like a craft show think about lamps I forget on almost every single one of these videos to tell you that all of the supplies and the tools that I use are listed down in the description so if you want to make one of these everything you need is listed down there go check it out I'd love to know what you think about this so while you're looking at that go down and leave me a comment and let me know what you think I've got lots of other projects that you may be interested in lots of different types of stuff so be sure to check those out this is the main Channel but I also have a second Channel with some behind the scenes stuff some non project related videos so be sure to go subscribe to both of those and when you do go down and hit the Bell so you get notified as soon as I upload that's it for this one guys thanks for watching I'll see you next time\n"