Secret Underground Laboratory Recovery & Salvage

06/21/2026

When someone brings you a delicate ceramic vase and asks if it can be a lamp by Father's Day, it's exactly the sort of thing we do. This always means making holes in the ceramic. Drilling glass or ceramic requires a special set up and the more delicate the ceramic, the more special it has to be.

Building a lamp from a delicate ceramic vase.

06/18/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab?

Today it's an unfortunate fallen soldier.
This is a 5 foot tall Nutcracker. In his prime, he had 2 dozen lights of different colors on his uniform, including the tip of his lance. The base is made of multiple layers of particle board, which gives him a very low center of gravity.

Water is the natural enemy of particle board and it's no friend of the tiny wires that power the LED bulbs. Corrosion has gotten inside the insulation and made the wire so brittle another one breaks when the harness is moved. Because of the way he is constructed, there's no practical way to restore the lights.

The base can be rebuilt and since he's half of a pair, that will probably be in his future.

06/05/2026

I'm calling this the Sweeny Todd shadow box. A customer brought in a collection of straight razors and other barbershop items that were used by his father and asked if I could make a shadow box. The razors and other metal pieces are held in place by rare earth magnets. The glass is in a frame that slips over the box.

05/30/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab today?

This was an interesting project. I had to pick up where someone left off work, but really never gave up. The customer brought a small chest to the Lab. This family heirloom was empty except for a cabinet lock and a key. The inside of the box showed the scars of two attempts to install a lock that was simply the wrong piece of hardware. Once again, Lab magic was able to finish the job.

Sometimes a project hits a snag and gets put to the side. Sometimes...

05/25/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab?

This is a mahogany laundry table, or at least, that's my best guess. It's definitely mahogany and when it came to the Lab, it had folding legs and weighed about 40 pounds. Its likely origin is India, where I suppose a mahogany laundry table might be commonplace. The customer wants to use it as a kitchen island. It needed to be 6 inches taller and a bit more solid than expected of a folding table. This called for leg extensions, knee braces, and a lower shelf. The original folding hardware is fastened to the table top with carriage bolts, so I followed a carriage bolt motif for the added parts. If sometime in the future, anyone wants to restore it to its original condition, everything can be unbolted and removed. There will be a dozen or so bolt holes, but they can call that character.

05/13/2026

A "basket case" is usually considered a hopeless situation, but the Lab never loses hope.

The Basket of Pearls style chandelier is a hemisphere of crystal chains with the lights inside. It's an invention of the gas light era. Early gas lights were a small improvement over oil lamps. They flickered and made just as much smoke. The invention of the gas mantle saved gas lights from the "nice try" trash bin of history. The gas mantle is a science lesson in itself, but if you've ever seen a Coleman Camp lantern, that's a gas mantle lamp. It's a bright white light and it was a great boon to the crystal industry. The mantle light extended the gas light era until electric bulbs became bright enough and pushed gas lamps out of common use.

Most gas lamps used the same pipe threads that are still used in electric lamps today, but some European fixtures used a metric pitch threaded pipe that's close, but not compatible. This is a problem when rewiring with modern sockets. Fortunately, Lab magic has a solution.

A Basket of Pearls Chandelier come to the Lab in a basket of loose pieces and the new sockets dont fit the old pipes.

05/09/2026

It's Ruidomo de. Mayo Day in the Secret Underground Laboratory Recovery and Salvage. It was on this day in 2020, took the position of Official Lab Cat. Before joining the Lab, Rui considered becoming a speed bump on East Airport Drive, but decided life in the fast lane was a very short life. In the past six years, Rui's duties have included greeting customers who don't like cats, inspecting furniture for hidden dogs, and enforcing the Lab's strict "No rodents, no birds, no reptiles" policy.

04/19/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab today? More musical lamps. This is a clarinet and another cornette.

The customer chose marble bases for each. The clarinet has a cone shaped wooden spacer in the horn to hold it in position. The pipe for the cornette is from a vacuum cleaner wand.

As before, no drilling or cutting was needed.

04/08/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab?

No cornettes were harmed in the making of this lamp. I've made quite a few lamps with musical instruments. A trombone makes a striking wall sconce. This usually involves cutting the or drilling, which ends its life as an instrument. Of course, the instrument wasn't very valuable to begin with. Most were battered student grade pieces. In this case, we have a cornette in excellent condition. The customer also had a piano lamp he was willing to sacrifice for the cause. The center valve was removed and saved, which left a clear passage for the lamp pipe.

03/30/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab?

In this case, it's me, taking this picture. This is a huge mirror that weighs about 100 pounds. It needs a few small repairs and then I'll be making a base so it can sit safely on the floor.