This project began with a piece of junk off eBay, which, a few months later, was hanging at the front of my apartment.
It’s not necessarily a pretty sight, but when I saw this photo on eBay of an antique radiator (left) it piqued my interest. The radiator, out of a 6-horepwoer hit-or-miss gas engine from ~1900 (right), was made entirely of brass and copper. A relic from a time before aluminum and stainless alloys.
The Idea
What this radiator made me think of is a beehive, given all the copper hexagonal mesh used for heat exchange. The center hexagon, which was built as a pass-through for the drive shaft of the original engine, struck me as a great space to fit a lightbulb. Thus, the idea was born: to refurbish the radiator and decorate it into a beehive themed chandelier.
The Initial Construction
Construction began slowly, with the initial phase focused first on a thorough cleaning of the radiator, then on gathering decorative pieces and stock for construction. My design goals driving the project were as follows:
- The radiator would be cleaned and polished, but I’d make minimal permanent alterations (to, in a way, honor the piece).
- Bee and beehive themed decorations would be added to the radiator to sell the idea of the piece as a hanging beehive of sorts.
- Everything would be held together mechanically (solder if necessary), and copper, brass, and bronze would be used preferentially (to fit with the era in which the radiator was manufactured).
I managed to source some antique push-button pins for the bees which would be traversing all around the radiator, and I discovered a cache of porcelain flowers to use as further decoration. I also set out amassing a bunch of brass and bronze hardware to eventually hang the piece, and to fasten the decor to the radiator.
Mechanical Fastening
As glue will inevitably fail in the long-run, I decided I wanted all the decoration to be mechanically fastened to the radiator. Attaching the decor securely, and without any eyesores, indeed proved a challenge, and the solution was to make the bees themselves into threaded posts, which could be secured with a nut on the back side of the radiator. The flowers were affixed with similar posts, with capped nuts decorating the ends of the bolts. These capped nuts were chosen to sit-up in the honeycomb structure and look like cells full of brood or honey.
A Bit of Fabrication
After the decorations were complete, the next task was building an insert for a light socket that would fit into the large central hexagon of the radiator. However, I didn’t like the idea of just a bulb sitting in the middle of the radiator. The light might be too harsh, and the look would leave something to be desired. The solution I came up with was to build a removable lantern-esque cage that would dress up the lightbulb that’d sit within it.
After trying a few mockups with polystyrene, testing out different heights and bulb sizes, it came time to start machining the cage out of brass.
Following the machining and soldering of the lighting cage, I had to come up with a way to attach it to the radiator. I figured removing the cage would be the best way to change and access the bulb, so soldering to the radiator was out of the question, and bolts would necessitate access to the top of the piece, which seemed like too much of a hassle just to change a bulb. What I settled on was ball-detent latches, which would provide a solid hold, but allow the cage to be pulled-off if access was needed.
Final Assembly
The Final Product
