This is going to be a project of mine, where I build my own 1940’s era reproduction fluorescent shop light. I’ll be building it entirely from scratch, using nothing but some sheet metal and basic tools. It’s gonna be a proper 5-foot fixture, and it’s going to rock 3 F60T12 slimline tubes that I’m going to attempt to run on standard European ballasts. I’m hoping it’s going to strike and work fine on our 230 volt mains without needing an auto transformer ballast.

The tubes aren’t with me physically yet as we speak, and neither are the sockets. These tubes need very special FA8 sockets, which I was able to buy on eBay. I just hope they’ll fit and work because they are marketed as for “LED” tubes, which I doubt but whatever lol, we shall find out. I don’t see why they’d be any different than standard FA8 ones. They say something about being “non-shunted”, whatever that means. As far as I’m aware, as long as I can connect a wire to the pins of the tubes, im gonna be able to make this work quite nicely indeed. The tubes should be here sometime next week, and the sockets should be here within 2-3 weeks.

But since I know the approximate length of the tubes, 1500mm, I can go ahead and start making the main section of the light fixture. The fixture will be constructed using as few materials as possible, just like they originally were back in the WW2 era. It will be painted white once I’m done drilling all holes for tube sockets and everything, so it won’t be so glaring and so it doesn’t rust.

The fixture will be 1650mm long, to allow some
Space for the FA8 sockets since they are fairly large. The fixture will be open-ended, because that’s how most were back in those days.  I’ll be making it out of 1.2mm thick steel, it’s a little overkill, but that’s what was available to me


So Tonight, I built the main section of the fixture, and it’s looking quite good indeed! I made it from two separate pieces, because making it all in one piece is physically impossible with the basic tools I have at hand. So I made a two piece design that I then riveted together down the middle.

I added some really heavy duty mounting hooks, because this thing weighs a lot, probably around 30kG. It will have to be chained to the ceiling when I go to mount it, ropes or small steel wire definitely won’t be sturdy enough for this beast!

I also finished the evening off by making a little cover for where the ballasts will be, not strictly necessary, many fixtures from this era simply had them mounted on top . But I want to add at least some level of electrical safety to this, so I’m gonna at least make it so you can’t directly touch anything!

Below are pictures of how it turned out so far! what do you guys think?

@tigerelectronics
The Fa8 "LED" sockets are almost certainly going to work for a fluorescent tube, as they have the same exact connector. "Shunted" and "non shunted" are two terms that are only relevant for 2-pin sockets, so probably was just put in there as a buzzword so it shows up for more searches.

When you said you would rivet two pieces together, I though it would be cut in half the short way, not the long way. Riveting it this long way is definitely looking good!

1.2mm steel?!?! This fixture will last generations! 30kG is definitely a lot, I wouldn't want that falling on my head!

This is looking great, a life-long fixture is in the making! If you ever burn through all of those tubes, you can pretty easily convert it to use more accessible tubes, but the cool factor will be decreased.

I am excited to see it all done!
 

That looks awesome! Well done.

This looks really nice so far. 

Yes nice job, it’s certainly shaping up to be a shop light 😎, I don’t think we ever had this type of US shop light in the uk?🤔, I think most of ours were over engineered ‘built like a tank’ battens! 😃