A rustic, hanging light fixture for the kitchen table

After 13 lunch breaks and a full weekend of work, I’m extremely pleased with our new light fixture for the dining table.

We made it out of a rough-sawn board which we sanded, oiled, varnished and equipped with fittings for GU10 light bulbs and a custom-made safety railing to keep things placed on top of the board from falling off of it. It required a little welding, a few 3D-printed parts, multiple coats of oil and varnish and a heck of a lot of sanding.

The finished product. I'm really happy with this one.
The light fixture adorned with some fake but fairly realistic plants.

My wife came up with the idea after seeing something similar online, though on a much smaller scale, and I gladly took on the challenge to scale it up to our requirements. Also, I had been yearning for a good excuse to learn the basics of welding and I could hardly have found a better one.

The light fixture switched off, illuminated by natural light coming in through a nearby window.

I made the railing by stick welding lengths of square steel tube. The tube I have used has a cross section of 1 cm x 1 cm and is 1 mm thick. I designed and 3D-printed the stands for the railing at home using Prusament PETG Galaxy Black, which goes very well with the overall rustic / industrial look.

I will happily admit to copious amounts of trial and error, having never done any sort of welding prior to this project. I used metal plaster to smooth out the inevitable imperfections before applying two coats of anti-rust, metallic spray paint with an antique / matte finish.

The top side of the light fixture while I was testing the electrical wiring, showing the railing stands and covers for the light fittings.

I used warm, 2700K GU10 LED bulbs by Philips, each roughly equivalent to a 50 W standard bulb. I can’t recall their specific CRI index but, experientially, I’m quite happy with the quality of the light that they emit. The board is 180 cm in length and is fitted with six light bulbs, making it equivalent to roughly 300 W worth of standard bulbs. We find that amount of light to be just right but, as they say, your mileage may vary. Actual power consumption sits at around 28 W.

The raw rough-sawn board after drilling the holes for the light fittings and testing the fit. After this came a lot of sanding, two coats of oil and two coats of matte varnish.

The light fixture hangs from the ceiling through four lengths of 1 mm steel wire rope, with turnbuckles used for the finer height and leveling adjustments. Each of the 6 mm anchors used for the ceiling-mounted hooks is rated for loads up to 15 kg while the wire is rated for loads up to 12 kgs; the latter is more than twice the entire weight of the light fixture, giving us a lot of safety margin.