New Desk Lamp

A week ago boingboing ran a short blarticle about this cool Kozo-lamps  (whatever is a Kozo lamp? The name of the designer? Wikipedia fails me here!) from Etsy, made from plumbing fixtures. I really, really liked the look, and decided to make my own.

So this evening after work I headed to the nearest Obi, and raided their plumbing department. One hour later and là voilá! my very own plumbing fixture lamp. Bask in it's galvanised glory!

 It is of course illuminiating the "New Annotated Dracula" (see review here) as is fitting, because, ah, vampires like plumbing. Yes.

From another angle:

 And finally a black-and-white close-up, in case you want to make your own:

 It is really quite simple, and did not take me more than an hour. Well, it is not quite finished, since I still have to stuff the two cables into a bit of shrink-wrap or so, but it does work. In case you want to copy my design, you'll need (please excuse me if I get the terminology wrong, my knowledge of plumber-terminology is sadly lacking. Clearly, I will never get to be a vampire.):

• 5 "elbow" pieces for the legs and head
• 5 T-pieces
• 6 short male-male connectors, 4cm long
• 1 male-male connector, 8 cm long 
• 1 female-female connector
• 1 longer male-male pipe
• one 40 mm to 12 mm reduction (the head)
• a 40 mm diameter (GU 4), 12V, 20 Watt halogen bulb
• a 12 Volt transformer capable of delivering 20 Watt
• a bit of wire
• a bit of super glue (cyan acrylate) 

Everything together (except the transformer, since I had an 18 Watt trafo lying around - won't get full brightness with it, of course) cost me around 70 swiss francs, or 46 euros.

Assemble the lamp and don't forget to insert the wire into the tubes. solder the leads to the  bulb and insert it into the lamp-head - glue it in with a bit of super-glue. Don't use hot glue, since the head will get quite hot. Aaand... that's it. You are now the proud owner of a plumbing fixture lamp. Do keep an eye out for jealous vampires!

A few modifications could be made to the design: Using leds instead of halogen bulbs would decrease the energy consumption by about a factor of five, while keeping the temperature of the lamp-head down. I actually thought about doing that, but being a victim of the evil, evil instant-gratification  society that formed me, I wanted my lamp now, now, now!, and using halogen saved me at least 10 minutes of soldering. There might actually led-replacement lamps for the halogen standard GU 4 - I know this stuff exists for GU 5.3, since I use it for my bicycle lights. But the good old Obi didn't have them and... now, now, now!

 So, tell me what you think: Fugly? Awesome? Will you make your own?