So I’ve managed to get one of the two old light fixtures that I bought at a yard sale cleaned and rewired, and it doesn’t look half bad, granted there are spots of surface pox on the arms where rust has worked through the old varnish to the cast iron below. (Sometimes wisdom in the antiques trade consists of knowing when to stop repairing.) I’ve cleaned up the seventy years of dust and dirt and bug parts that clogged each of the sockets, washed the crud off the cut-glass stem, scraped loose the accretions of dirt on the metal parts, rewired the whole fixture with correct-to-period rayon-covered wire, and worked out the jigsaw puzzle of how to make everything fit together again, and if I do say so myself, it doesn’t look half bad. I’ve stripped down the larger fixture (five lights, instead of three), washed and cleaned everything, and cut the lengths of wire for rewiring. Next I get to coat the bare wire ends with solder, find a replacement switch (I don’t trust the one that was in the lamp, any more) re-connect the whole shooting match, and assemble the fixture again.
Before; note dirt and grunge on glass stem, and rotten wiring
After
