I recently got a wonderful floor lamp from my Mom. It was in our house my whole childhood, and saved for when one of us finally wanted it. It dates from the mid-40’s, and, although this has nothing to do with my question, it’s black and brass art deco style, and it won design awards right and left. It is what is now called a torchiere, with a large glass bowl resting on the base (and the electrical guts) of the lamp.
It lived for many years (20 maybe) in my Mom’s bedroom, unused, with a light bulb that had come loose from its base still in the socket. I broke off the bulb and used a potato to get the base out of the socket. I then carefully wiped the inside of the socket and eventually went so far as to turn the whole thing upside down and shake out the accumulated bits of insects, dust and other oddments. When I put the new light bulb into it, I was initially delighted to find that it did still work! Yea!! Except it didn’t. It sputters, it flickers from one degree of brightness to another, and there does seem to be a tiny sound of sizzling and yes, a pop or two. Adjusting the bulb does not help.
Does it need to be re-wired? It has a mogul sized socket, would using an adapter be sufficient to make it work safely? Any advice will be gratefully recieved.
I cannot speak to the mogul issue, but I would hazard a guess that replacing the cloth-covered wiring would not cause the sputtering problem to get worse and should make the thing safer.
The ordinary incandescent bulbs you have about the house are called ‘Edison’ base, so what you might want is an edison/mogul adaptor. An edison lamp cannot make proper contact in a mogul base fixture.
That said, as tomndebb mentioned, the internal wiring is rather old. The insulation is very likely brittle, and contacts in poor condition owing to oxidation. Have a knowledgeable person string new wiring through it, and it’s likely the socket can be replaced with one sized for edison bulbs, eliminating the need for an adaptor, and you can pick up the convenience of perhaps a three-way socket.
A small price to pay for electrical and fire safety.
Flickering? Sizzling sounds? Sputtering and popping? Unplug it now. That’s not electricity, that’s Voodoo. Yes, rewire it. It’s really very simple. The socket-and-switch lump connects to a long wire which goes down to the floor. Take the guts out, and go to a hardware or building supply store (Home Depot®, Lowe’s®, and such.) If you can’t get it apart, take the whole thing. They’ll show you what you need. By the way, you can switch from mogul base to standard without losing brightness. If you have a choice between big-enough wire and one size bigger, take the bigger wire.
I agree with danceswithcats and **tomndebb ** that you should have the lamp rewired and the socket replaced. It will not be that expensive, and is not likely to harm the value of the lamp, either.
Here’s an idea: Check your local yellow pages for a stained-glass shop that builds and repairs leaded lamps. The workers there will not only have experience in wiring lamps, but they are quite likely to be experienced in rewiring older fixtures (including some of the weirdest configurations you can imagine!) As a bonus, they’re likely to appreciate your lamp as much as a piece of art as a source of light.
At the glass shop where I work, we’re always happy to do a rewiring job on a vintage lamp. We can’t possibly be the only ones.
Cool. I don’t mind the mogul sized base, although not everywhere sells that size bulbs–I wasn’t trying to get a regular (edison) bulb to work in it ( I’d figured that much out, at least). However, replacing the old socket with an edison socket would mean that I’d be more likely to have another bulb on hand when the one in the floor lamp burns out.
Safety-wise, I did unplug it and removed the bulb from the socket after my initial experiment. And I remembered to check the wiring from base to plug to make sure it hadn’t been chewed or damaged. I was just optimistic enough to hope the internal wiring was shipshape. AskNott, your confidence in my abilty to do simple re-wiring is charming, but I think I’ll look for a place to re-wire it for me, as Uvula Donor suggested–I’m in the early stages of learning to be a handyman, and I avoid anything dealing with electrical or plumbing. Especially at the same time–that would be bad, right?
Wasn’t casting any aspersions, Kallessa. Over the years I’ve seen so many different things attempted, I rule very little out.
Something else thought of later-if you want to maintain the antique value of the lamp, then staying mogul might be better. The big boxes won’t carry incandescent lamps in mogul base, but your local electrical supply house will stock or be able to get them.
It’s a shame you’re not near me-you could sign up for the adult evening ed class I teach. Lamp rewiring is a frequent request.
Thanks, ftg, when I think about it, jiggling the switch did get a reaction (like the light coming on halfway through turning the knob, then going out when it clicked into place), so I’ll make sure that gets taken care of at the same time.
I totally understand about not wanting to do rewiring yourself; so far I’ve avoided electrical stuff.
But any antique lamp shop should be able to do rewiring for you. In fact, if you’re near the DC area, we have a dear friend who runs an antique lamp shop (in an antique mall on Georgia Avenue near Olney); if you go in and see Nick, the owner, he’ll take really good care of you and fix your lamp perfectly. Nearly every lamp in our house now is one we got from Nick, old lamps that he rewired and put new shades on and make lovely and usable again.
I have found that if a mogul socket works but flickers or skips levels it may need to have the screws tightened.
First unplug the lamp and hang on the the plug with one hand and with the other hand and a medium slotted screw driver, tighten all of the screws inside the mogul socket. This will give you a 50% chance of repair.
hopefully Kallessa has fixed the lamp by now or stopped using it.
the contacts that the bulb touches are very likely problem points as well. with the lamp unplugged some sandpaper should be used to clean them to shiny metal. if it still doesn’t work then the center contact(s) might have been pushed down over time by bulbs and not making good contact. with the lamp unplugged gently pull up the center contacts just a hair.
other common failures are screws coming loose or connections becoming corroded. wiring in old lamps can be very brittle and easily made bad if not handled with care. switch contacts can be corrode with age, operate the switch (with the lamp unplugged) a dozen or so times to sees if it cleans the switch contacts; if not the switch needs to be replaced if it can’t be rebuilt.
