I have a workbench at the front of my garage. The only thing that's bugged me about having it there is that I can't suspend any lights over it because the garage door needs to open and close.
One other thing about me? I'm frugal. So even if I could suspend lights over the bench, I didn't want to pay a lot for them.
After about 18 days in a row of solid work, I got a little bit of time off today, and I came up with a solution. Whether it's a good solution is open to debate. But I came up with something that met my two design criteria: I wanted suspended lights over the workbench, and I wanted them to be cheap.
First I made a bar to hold a pair of lights. It would extend out from the wall, so the garage door could go above it. I had steel left over from my fence that I welded together.
I added a support to a base plate to reduce sag, and actually tested the weight of the two lamps on the bar to pre-stress it so that when it bent under their weight, it would end up level.
Here are both brackets. I made a short one for a single lamp on the other side of the garage opening, since I'd been relying on a $5 trouble lamp over there for light.
Here's the short support with a coat of primer, then paint, then the lamp wire threaded through it. Very simple.
Then the frugal part. This is an $8.99 aluminum cake pan. It's 14" in diameter and 3" deep. I cut a hole in the center.
I painted a lamp socket gray and used a circline (O-shaped) fluorescent bulb that comes with a socket adapter in the middle of the ring.
Here's a quick shot of my test run. There's one lamp on the left and two on the right. The garage isn't cleaned up yet, but my wife wanted to see a movie this afternoon, so I had to wrap things up after dinner.
One other thing about me? I'm frugal. So even if I could suspend lights over the bench, I didn't want to pay a lot for them.
After about 18 days in a row of solid work, I got a little bit of time off today, and I came up with a solution. Whether it's a good solution is open to debate. But I came up with something that met my two design criteria: I wanted suspended lights over the workbench, and I wanted them to be cheap.
First I made a bar to hold a pair of lights. It would extend out from the wall, so the garage door could go above it. I had steel left over from my fence that I welded together.
I added a support to a base plate to reduce sag, and actually tested the weight of the two lamps on the bar to pre-stress it so that when it bent under their weight, it would end up level.
Here are both brackets. I made a short one for a single lamp on the other side of the garage opening, since I'd been relying on a $5 trouble lamp over there for light.
Here's the short support with a coat of primer, then paint, then the lamp wire threaded through it. Very simple.
Then the frugal part. This is an $8.99 aluminum cake pan. It's 14" in diameter and 3" deep. I cut a hole in the center.
I painted a lamp socket gray and used a circline (O-shaped) fluorescent bulb that comes with a socket adapter in the middle of the ring.
Here's a quick shot of my test run. There's one lamp on the left and two on the right. The garage isn't cleaned up yet, but my wife wanted to see a movie this afternoon, so I had to wrap things up after dinner.
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