Making a Teapot Kitchen Lamp

During our travels, I came across a page in an interior design book that featured a teapot lamp. Both my husband and I thought it'd be pretty fun to create one of our own and started the search for an antique teapot. We found this copper one for $10 while perusing some stores in wine country.

I took the pot into the shop and started hacksawing away at the bottom lip to remove the base. This is how my husband found me after work one day. I thought about clamping in the lathe, but the copper was too soft to really clamp onto. 

We ground down the sharp edges on the sanding belt afterwards and cleaned the inside of the pot. We saved the base we cut off to make an internal fixture for leveling the light bulb inside. 

We used adhesive to mound the teapot base onto the CNC and cut a fixture plate to size. This is the second piece of kitchen hardware we've found ourselves machining to some degree. 

Given the antique look of the teapot, we searched around for the perfect light bulb. IKEA surprisingly had some interesting contenders, but we eventually went with this LED filament 4W bulb from Rejuvenation. They sell an amazing selection of lights and light fixtures if you ever want to see a huge variety in one setting. 

We're enjoying the teapot lamp in our kitchen now. Someday, I might try making lamps using white ceramic teapots. Happy tea time!