Home made adjustable work light


Author: Dave
Date: 12.20.12 - 5:41am



About 20 yrs ago i bought an old bench top South Bend metal lathe from the 50s. Today I was digging through some old stuff and came across an adjustable work light that the former owner had made for it.

I never noticed it before, but this guy included a subtle little dash of brilliance in his design which I have just discovered.

The light post was made by cutting out a slot in the ends of some tubing, then flattening the ends and putting a screw with a wing nut through it. He included 3 adjustable points as well as a way to rotate the entire assembly near the base.



Creating your own adjustable work light is pretty cool, because they are generally pretty expensive, but one in thing in particular about this light that always struck me, is how it always kept its adjustment perfectly. Even expensive ones rarely do this, unless they have those little notched teeth on every pivot (which in turns makes them quite annoying to adjust)

So today when i was finally reinstalling it after a decade of storage, I noticed just how he did it and why it works so well! Take a close look at the following picture. Notice anything?



He has rotated the angle of of the joints 45deg for each section as he went, so that the weight of the head does not bear in direct line of the joints and is instead transmitted into a binding motion of the joint. This means that the weight of the light actually helps to have it hold its own position rather than working against itself. Its actually quite brilliant and I have never seen that technique used before even in commercial products. I should also point out, that from what I saw with the other tooling he made for the lathe, this guy was very meticulous and I would not consider this an accident.

I got the lathe at an estate sale. This is one beautiful little easter egg he silently left and only discovered some 20yrs after his death. Very cool!




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