These lights are those I didn`t take much picture of while making them, unfortunately. But it was super easy to make them so you can easily figure it out by the present pictures. It took me about 2 whole days and 50$ to make it. While the whole process from making up the design to installing took about a year or more.

Weathered wood beams

The thing is that after the construction of the house, lots of different woods were left, including the pine beams. So when I finally had the clear picture of the lamp in my mind I cut one of them into two 80 cm (2 5/8′) pieces and left them outdoors for the fall and winter so the rain and snow could give them a “touch”, but on an open space so it didn`t rot. 

Then I brought them indoors and let them dry for a couple of days.

The wood became harder and got a perfect walnut shade all through the bar. Here`s another natural wood stain idea.

Notches for the electrical supplies

First I sanded all of their sides. Then made three holes for the lamps in each bar with a router (you can use drill with an appropriate bit). The holes should be deep so there`s enough space for the bulb cartridge or Driver (if it`s a LED lamp) and its ventilation.

For the cable and the Driver ventilation I made two through holes for each lamp (6 holes altogether). With a circular saw I made a cut which matches these holes to fit the wire there. And finally grinded the whole surface.

I haven`t covered the bars at all just polished it thoroughly to get it very smooth, because the wood became so hard that now it`s even moisture resistant and I can easily wipe it with a wet cloth.  

Installing the lamps into the bars

I made these lamps at the beginning of 2019 when had no idea that I would have shared this with someone, so unfortunately I don’t have pictures with the holes for the LED lamps. But I can assure you that I did my best while working with the router to perfectly fit those lamps (and Drivers) into these bars. The holes are a bit thicker than the LED lamps so after connecting all the wires I needed a mallet to put them to their place. Made a parallel connection of the lamps, so if one of them is out of order, the others still work.

Attaching the bars to the wooden beams

The beams are 20 cm (approx. 7 ½″) thick. So I made two 10 cm (4″) deep holes in each beam and two holes in each bar for the hooks. Generously spread the wood glue all over the hooks` surface (except of the rings), and screwed them into the beams and bars (eight 10 cm hooks altogether).

As these lights supposed to be above the dining table, I wanted to have an opportunity to lift them up or lower when necessary.

The ceiling in the dining room is 3 m (10′) high, so I decided to make three positions with the help of four pieces of 2 m (7′) long rope: upper – when more light needed, middle – when there`s no dining table, so we could walk beneath, and lower – right above the dining table, to give some intimate vibes to the dinner. The lowest position is 1,5 m (5′) high to illuminate the table, not the people around, but at the same time it`s high enough to see people who is sitting at the table. To accomplish this idea I tied the rope to the hook, fed it through a metal ring while making a knot, so I could fix that ring with the knot. That`s the upper position. Then made another knot with a ring pulling down about 60 cm (2′) for the middle position. And finally, pulling down about 70 cm (2 1/3′) I tied this rope to the hook on the bar.

To hang the bars on those little iron rings I screwed two other smaller (7 cm or 3″ long) hooks into the bar, previously also making holes for them with a drill and pouring glue into these holes.     

Electrical connection

When constructing the house I worked out a very detailed electrical plan and of course I knew where and what kind of lamps we would have in the future. So the lamp wires were already there, I just had to connect the LED lamps wires to them with the help of such little connectors. It`s really easy. As there are lots of different decorative wires nowadays, I decided not to hide them, but to braid them around the ropes. So for each bar I attached 2 solid wires to the output wire, braided them around the ropes and attached them to the wires coming out of the LED lamps.

Swing

The final step was to check it`s reliability, because two 9 kg (20 lbs.) bars are going to hang over our heads. So I had a little ride on it (it was really fun to swing IN the room, not somewhere outside) and the wooden pendant lamp officially passed the test.    

And it`s also a quite acceptable idea on: