Gsport reading lamp.

The missus has regular moments of insanity. I like a girl with fire, who is brash, unruly and flirts with madness, it keeps me on my toes and stops me getting too complacent.

After a skinful the other night my special lady-friend lost all control and amongst other things threw a bedside lamp at me for virtually no reason. I say no reason but to be honest I'm always on the wind up, I constantly think I'm in the right and I'm forever going off on one in an elitist and up my own arse way, this blog serves as truthful testament to that, what I'm trying to say is that it can't be easy to live with me. However I'm almost certain that this time the table light launch was not instigated by me.

When my lady threw the lamp it was on a collision course with my head but fortunately the electrical wire was too short and it plummeted about a foot before it hit my cranium and rested on the bed. Enraged by this I picked up the bairns blue wooden ukulele sized 6 string guitar from toys R Us and brought it down on the lamp like a miniaturised iconic punk Clash album cover moment. I heard an almighty shatter but saw nothing because the first thing to burst was the bulb and the room was plunged into total darkness.

When morning arrived I realised that the Toys R Us guitar had survived perfectly intact, it was even still in tune, the bedside reading lamp however was not so lucky. Pieces of the cheap and nasty ceramic Wilko lamp stand were covering the entire bedroom.

I have a problem with these Wilko lamps, every house I've ever been in there has been at least two of these cheap and nasty lamps and they're always exploding.

This week I set out to build the strongest table lamp ever constructed.

The Gsport hub is the strongest BMX hub ever produced. Made in the UK out of billet aluminium this thing was made for the heaviest street abuse that can be thrown at it. This particular hub is from 96 or 97 when they were still made in Sheffield probably by George French himself. The hub shell, bearing and cone form the core of my light fitting.

I salvaged the workings from the destroyed lamp and routed them carefully through the hub. The fitting was a little low at the top for the mismatched shade (the shade to fit this fitting was entirely destroyed by the guitar) so I had to space it out by some more UK handmade components in the form of a 1 inch Rekka headset cup. Rekka didn't make much, they were a UK company from Harrow maybe, back in the days of radio station home made gyro cables and zero rake flatland bars. Rekka were the first to produce super strong headset cups and these were made of stainless steel. Custom riders still have them for sale??? The strength is mounting within my lamp.

I had to sit an aluminium 1inch Ahead spacer in the cup to make it flush for the lamp shade to butt up against when the plastic retaining nut is tightened down.

The base of the lamp is made from a roughly sanded square cut piece of inch thick old floor board. I nailed the hub to it with brass nails through the spoke holes. There is a central core of plastic tube as the original Gsport axle is not hollow all the way through and would have been impossible to drill.

I cut a groove in the wood for the the cable to sit in along the bottom of the base. You can see the raggedy ass job I made of making a hole big enough to get the switch through the base in this picture.

I secured the cable in the base groove with a single plate from a KMC 510 chain and a couple of thin screws. To stop the lamp rocking about and to give it good purchase on a variety of surfaces I cut little oblongs of rubber from a Mission BMX grip (the kind you get on Kink completes) and screwed them down.

Once I finally righted this thing it was way sturdy.

The finished product is strong enough for my sweetheart to throw around to her hearts content in our picture perfect home of love, equality, bliss and tranquility. Plus it has to be the most BMX light in the history of lamp making.