Monday, September 2, 2013

A Broken Glare Baffle


I have an old Circline articulated drafting lamp (a Luxo "Combo") that had spent a long time idle up on a high shelf. The other day, I found I had a new use for it, so I went to fetch it down. The glare baffle fell out of it and promptly broke, like so.


The two pieces don't want to mate back together snugly, and the plastic material they're made of looks to me like the sort of plastic that no adhesive will truly adhere to. I'll have to come up with some way to 'wire' it back together.

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Here's what I have in mind for a repair method.



Those 3 1/4" lengths of 3/16" diameter dowel will serve as 'rib' reinforcements; the 20 AWG enamelled copper wire is what I'll use to lash the 'ribs' in place. This may not turn out to be the most elegant bit of work I've ever done, but it should serve.

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Here's the first rib firmly wired in place.



This is working better than I'd hoped it would.

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And here's the completed repair.






Not a bad outcome at all.

I mentioned earlier that the baffle's plastic material is unlikely to take adhesive well, but I applied CA adhesive to all the rib interfaces and wire twists anyway. I figured it couldn't hurt.

Here's a view of the baffle back in place in the Luxo lamp. (I tried to photograph it with the lamp lit, but the camera wanted no part of that action.)



Were I doing this again, I'd use smaller (1/8" diameter) dowel for ribs. What I did here has worked out ok, but I was pushing my luck a little for clearance above the baffle to the Circline with the 3/16" diameter dowel.

Anyway, that lamp pictured above is excellent. It has a 22W Circline fluorescent tube, with a 60W incandescent bulb in the middle. The light it sheds is superb for any kind of fine, close work.

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