Restoring an Anglepoise 90
“When I was a kid, my great aunts had an original black Anglepoise. It was just a solid piece of British engineering. Now the Anglepoise has become iconic and synonymous with Pixar “
Back then, it was just solid utilitarian British engineering!
Being older, I now realise it was a model 1227. They still make these!
Unfortunately, I have no idea where the lamp ended up. But, I was clearing out my parent’s house and found it’s younger sibling – the Anglepoise 90. It’s not got the same seminal square pyramidic base, and it was painted in ’70’s light green.
And it was paint scarred.
So I thought I’d ‘restore’ it. My idea was to sand it down and polish it to a mirror finish since it’s (mostly) Aluminium.
Unfortunately I didn’t really do any ‘before’ pictures.
Also, I didn’t succeed in the mirror-finish. Transpires I didn’t have either the equipment or patience or both to complete that!
It does look pretty cool though, in a polished-ish, burnished final state.
And I did complement it with a red silk braided cord that is quite striking.
The ‘restore’
I disassembled the lamp. I did take a couple of pictures for reference (not enough as it transpires but more on that later).
Then I used paint stripper and rubbed it down progressively using finer grit wet n dry – I probably used about 8 grades, from 240 including 1500, 2000 and finishing on 3000.
I then bought some polishing mops for both my Bosch GRO 12V (basically a ‘Dremel’ like multitool) and my 18V Bosch drill, along with various jewellers polishing compounds.
Long story short, and possibly it was just lack of patience, but I figured I was never going to get a mirror finish using the polishing mops and doing it hand-held.
So I changed tack and convinced myself I’d be happy with the a more rustically burnished finish.
(In truth, I really like it now).
I even decided to leave some traces of the old paint on a the swivel mount….
Reassembly
I bought a length of red silk covered braided 3 core flex.
My Anglepoise 90 was double insulated, but you don’t seem to be able to buy two core braided, so for good measure I decided to earth the lamp too. I basically connected the earth core to a screw on the lower articulated element and checked continuity on the other metal components too. This then meant ‘only’ feeding two twisted cores through the inner supports.
One very tricky part of the reassembly – the lower inner support that holds the cable on its run up to the lamp holder contains (in my version) a plastic insert designed to securely hold the flat, double insulated original flex. I couldn’t for the life of me get this out, and I couldn’t get the two strands of the braid up it either.
The only way I managed was to ‘burn it out’ using an old 8W pencil thin soldering iron. It cleaned up afterwards, but I’d rather not have done it that way.
I’d left a considerable time between disassembly and reassembly – probably three months, as other stuff got in the way. So I’ll admit to having been a bit puzzled as to some of the pieces on reassembly! Fortunately, I was able to look on eBay where there are loads for sale and some good people had taken sufficient pictures to help me work through what I should have done it the first place. Many thanks!
The resulting lamp looks good so another pleasing ‘project’ completed!
