Iconic French Wonder Lamp - Restoration
In this video im restoring an old french Wonder lamp.
My good friend TysyTube Restoration bought this Wonder lamp on a flea market in Paris. He asked me if I want to restore it and obviously I said yes. He already restored two of them himself, I link his videos and channel below. These Wonder lamps are very well known in France, theyre used on railroads mostly as far as I know.
I first wanted to paint the inside of the lamp white, but as soon as I saw the amazing look of the sandblasted aluminium I decided to go with that. I just had to remove the casting marks first and then sandblast it again. I choose yellow for the lamp with black letters and black for the handle and the switch. It had a few brass parts that were deformed to keep them in place, which I had to grind away to loosen them. I made all these parts new on the lathe and mill and gave them a nice mirror polish. I deformed them again when reassembling, except for the threads. It was quite a challenge to organize the battery, as theyre not produced anymore today. MC-51 rust remover did an amazing job on the very rusty steel parts, a bit of sanding and polishing and they appeared like brand new. Same goes for the plastic parts, I sanded them wet with 400 grit and polished them with car wax.
I really like how this lamp turned out, even that the colours are not original, the yellow goes very nice with the black and polished parts in my opinion. As I mentioned above, Ill keep this lamp for myself for display.
I hope you like my work and the video.
Huge thank you to all of my Patreon and PayPal supporters and specially to:
Lewis Mocker
Uwe Keim
Jonathan McGhie
Anthony Archer
William V.
Afreeflyingsoul
Micky McKay
Alan Hanson
Alex Roussos
Gregory
Joan Casanovas
John Romero
Jonathan Heckerman
Paul Mampilly
SA Graver
Vince Valenti
Zachary Grimes
Timestamps:
00:00 preview
00:33 disassembling
02:44 showing all the parts
02:59 removing the old paint with paint striper
03:40 sandblasting
04:11 restoring the aluminium case
05:14 restoring the aluminium back plate
06:03 sandblasting the inside again
06:21 polishing the brass part of the aluminium case
06:35 restoring the switch
07:01 restoring the handle
07:28 applying two component filler before painting
08:06 applying two component primer
08:18 wet sanding the primer
08:30 applying two component yellow coat (signal yellow RAL1003)
08:36 applying two component black coat (jet black RAL9005)
08:42 painting the letters black
09:00 making new brass pins on the lathe
09:48 making new brass bolts on the lathe and mill
11:15 restoring the two knurled brass knobs
12:09 rempoving rust with MC-51 on the steel parts and polish them
12:47 making two new brass pins for the handle on the lathe
13:36 restoring the shaft from the switch
14:03 showing the cleaned glass
14:07 making a new rubber gasket for the glass
14:26 restoring the front reflector
14:37 restoring the small plastic part from the front reflector
14:52 restoring the red reflector
15:09 restoring the aluminium frame from the red reflector
15:24 polishing the nickel plated sheet
15:35 showing the other polished copper parts from the switch
15:40 showing the new battery
15:46 showing all the parts before reassembling
16:03 reassembling
19:00 showing the finished lamp
19:30 final test
Time and costs of this restoration:
I was working on this project over 2,5 weeks
Wonder lamp was a presant from TysyTube :-) Thank you
$35 Battery
$20 two component primer
$20 two component yellow coat (RAL1003)
$20 two component black coat (RAL9005)
$5 rivets
$5 bulbs
My camera:
Panasonic HC-V180
TysyTube Restoration channel:
www.youtube.com/channel/UCIGEtjevANE0Nqain3EqNSg
TysyTubes Wonder lamp restoration:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se47FWgfub0