Recently, a very unusual type of repair, a restoration of an antique French chandelier, a really large and heavy piece. Here, still without the crystals.

It had various mechanical problems, temporary early fixes, and doubtful electric cables. For the cabling, the old cables were all gold-pvc twin leads – I pulled these out and fitted fabric covered wires, 0.75 mm2 cross-section which is the minimum diameter required for lamp fitting.

The ends were fitted with cable shoes, M2.5 size. Protected with some heat shrink tubing to avoid broken wires.

The fabric matches nicely to the old brass.

There are 6 arms with 3 fittings each, 18 lamps in total, plus the arm connections to the center piece, pulled 24 wires in total. All is a bit tight, but with patience and steel wire as pilot, it is quite possible.

All the wires were prepared at one end beforehand, with heat shrink tubing coated (at the inside) with hot melt glue. This will keep the fabric cover from unraveling.

The connections have 3 layers of heat shrink tubing. The wires (4 neutral, 4 phase at each connection) were first crimped together by a metal tube, then soldered, then covered with VDE/UL rated heat shrink tubing, followed by another two layers of brown tubing.

Of the many smaller mechanical repairs, a few examples. One arm was broken at the bottom end, at the weak spot near the cable exit hole. To make this a lasting repair, I decided to braze it (rather than glue or solder). Brazing requires clean surfaces and thus I had to remove the “antique” coloration of the brass.

A piece of brass bent in a U-shape, added flux (typical mixture of zinc chloride and ammonia that I am using all the time for brazing brass), and silver brazing rod.

Heated it up with a propane-oxygen torch, let the brazing metal flow in, and it is almost done. Then, washed off the flux, dried it, and made it “old” again by a secret mixture (sodium bicarbonate, some dishwashing detergent, warm water, time).

After the repair, the brazed connection is barely visible. Stronger now than it ever was.

The bottom cover was also fairly damaged and out of shape, carefully corrected it with rubber and plastic mallets, etc.

The bottom connections (at the bottom center of the lamp, hidden underneath the cover) were rather fiddly to make, but also there, patience paid off. The center conductor is 3x1mm2 cable type H05VV-F, and ground well connected to the lamp.

Surely I also did an electric isolation test, 2 kV successful. Grounding is also good. So the electrical safety is all guaranteed.

On one assembly, a screw was missing, respectively, just the head of the screw. These are special hand-made and non-standard imperial brass screws. But drilling out the screw, making a custom screw, all pretty expensive, so I decided to just drill a new hole, cut an M4 thread, and use a standard M4 screw, with a little bit modified head.

Looking good. There is always a balance of effort and effect, maybe for a museum piece it is worth the effort to restore to 100% identical state, but for all other purposes, the M4 screw will do just fine.

The arms are composed of 3 pieces each, screwed together by what appears to be imperial thread 7/16″- 20 TPI.

The tread was worn-out, and had signs of earlier repair attempts, including glue and hemp fibres.

I filed down the thread carefully, then fitted a cylinder piece (with a 7/16-20 outside thread cut).

All soldered together, rather than brazed – soldering will be strong enough at this location, and I don’t put the patina of the brass at risk, which would require lengthy restoration to make it look “antique” again.

Some other repairs related to the glass pieces and the center rod. The lamp is held together by a steel tube, and fitted brass tubes to hold the distance. However, over time, there seems to have been some damage to glass parts, and the brass tubes were not long enough and well-fitted.

Especially at the lower end this results in the fragile glass pieces to carry heavy load. Not good, considering vibration and shock during transport, etc.

So I decided to install an intermediate support, to take the load of the upper glass pieces from the lowest, already somewhat cracked glass.

Always amazing how much brass rod has to be cut to make thin-walled piece like that! Fortunately, still have many large brass rods around here from days long ago, when the copper price was low…

Now you can see the effect, with the brass holder ring soldered to the center tube, the load of the glass no longer rests on the lowest fragile piece.

Similarly, all the other center brass tubes were correctly fitted and adjusted in length, some new spacers made, and some (laser-cut) washers of brown felt inserted to cushion the class.

Finally – the transport back to its future home worked out without damage – all done! The crystal pieces will be installed by the owner himself.