[Last updated: Monday, April 1, 2019.]
My wife found this bit of wreckage and brought it to me. The lamp has seen better days, though it does work. I tried a light bulb in it, and the switch and receptacle work fine.
Here's a closer view of the damage.
The lamp has led a rough life; it's been broken and repaired once before at about its middle.
There are the poorly positioned remnants of four 'feet' on the underside of the base. I'll scrape that stuff off and install better felt feet once I'm done gluing the base back together. 'First thing to do is to unscrew the nut at the bottom and free the remainder of the base from the column.
A 9/16" wrench gets the nut off the end of the structural tube that runs up the height of the lamp's column.
And here are most of the base pieces clamped up in my wood vise and glued with runny CA adhesive.
I'll leave that to cure overnight, then I'll glue on the missing corner, and add glue at the underside seams. I should end up with a serviceable lamp base.
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And There's Always A Booby Trap -- SUNDAY, MARCH 31, 2019
With the base reassembled, the plug won't go through the line cord hole in the base, of course.
I could disconnect the line cord from the receptacle, pull it out and then reinstall it later from the bottom as I ought to, but I don't feel like doing that. Besides, the plug is an old non-polarized one that could stand replacement with a proper, polarized plug.
I'll just snip off the plug. I have a polarized service-replacement plug on hand.
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Original Repair Falls Apart
The original repair wasn't much of a repair. The middle section of the lamp base went to pieces on me. I've glued that up with more runny CA adhesive, and set the thing aside to cure.
Since I had the lamp taken so far apart, I figured I may as well examine the wiring inside the receptacle. That led me to notice that the interface between the harp's base and the light bulb receptacle was a bit iffy.
It seems to me that the harp's base ought to be snugged up against the bottom end of the receptacle by a jam nut, so I added a 0.390"-27[1], 9/16" A/F jam nut, like so.
That should improve ease and strength of final assembly, at least a little.
Receptacle Miswired
The receptacle's outer shell showed some evidence of tampering. The receptacle/switch must have been replaced at one time, because the receptacle was miswired. The neutral (ribbed) conductor of the line cord was connected to the centre (switched) terminal of the receptacle; the hot (unribbed) conductor of the line cord was connected to the receptacle's inner shell. That's exactly backwards. The convention is ribbed conductor = neutral = receptacle shell. Needless to say, I've corrected the fault.
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All Done -- MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019
Here's the lamp back together and operational.
No one's ever going to accuse me of having done an 'invisible' repair job on the breakages; the glued seams are well in evidence to even a cursory inspection. But, from a distance, it's a fairly elegant table lamp.
It now has four decent cushioned feet, and a proper polarized plug.
The plug's wider prong connects to the ribbed conductor of the line cord, which connects to the inner shell of the light bulb receptacle. That's as it should be by way of a safety measure.
So there we are. I'll return the lamp to its owner, and she can find a shade for it and a place to put it.
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Note:
[1] 0.390"-27 is 1/8" straight pipe thread. It's the thread that's commonly found on all the threaded tubing and nuts that are used to assemble lamps. The nuts are not easy to come across. Lee Valley used to have them years ago, but apparently they no longer carry them. Not progress.
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