Mend It Monday: Light Work

One not-very-light light

The Snail bought a couple of craft lamps from an online auction the other day, an auction of things that had been returned to catalogues or shops. These are those LED ones, with a magnifying glass built in. With these large online affairs, you can never be sure what you will actually get, there are no guarantees that the things will be fully functional.

Neither of the lamps that arrived worked on switch on, which seemed a bit odd, so I swung into action*.

I checked the power supplies that came with them – you’ll remember I had to replace the one for the Snail’s lamp (see here for the details) – and they both worked fine. It was time to open them up…

Not many bits to go wrong in fact

It would appear on the first one that the On/Off switch was only interested in the Off position. It was odd, though, because it really looked as if the two bits of metal are touching and making the circuit but they clearly don’t. I did a classic bit of finagling and bent both bits of the switch towards each other, just a tad, and tried it out. Success!

This is not on… literally

The second lamp had the identical problem.

Subtle, I know, but the switch is slightly modified

I wonder how many of these are not returned to the seller, but end up in land fill, all for the want of a bit of simple metal bending? This is probably a common fault with these, so we will be looking out for more of these returns!

oOo