New Lamps for Old

There I was, minding my own business in a pub while away in the motorhome, when a lamp caught my eye. Not just any lamp – no, this one was fashioned from the stock of a shotgun, and I was instantly smitten.

There’s something about seeing an everyday object turned on its head that makes you think, “I could do that.” Admittedly, my inspiration bar was set some years ago by a table lamp I once saw in Amsterdam made from a gold-plated AK47 – which, to be fair, would have been a tad much for the Cotswolds. But a tasteful lamp fashioned from a gunstock? That, I thought, has “Philip’s workshop” written all over it.

Of course, when you get an idea like this, there’s the small matter of sourcing the raw materials. Enter Facebook Marketplace – that marvellous bazaar of everything from broken Dyson hoovers to horses you wouldn’t trust to carry a sack of carrots, let alone a human. There, on the Isle of Wight, I found not one but two air rifles. Perfect. Except the seller “couldn’t post them for obvious reasons,” which is fair enough – you can’t exactly stroll into the Post Office with a rifle-shaped package and a cheery “second-class, please.”

But since I only wanted the wooden stocks, the chap kindly agreed to saw them off and stick them in a box. That’s commitment to customer service, that is. Two amputated air rifles later, I was £20 lighter plus postage – a bargain in my book, though I now imagine somewhere on the Isle of Wight there’s a man scratching his head over two newly limbless rifles.

Now, here’s the rub. The stocks have made it to my workshop, and there they’ll no doubt languish for a year or more, propped in a corner next to the Triumph GT6 bits, odd lengths of steel, and half-finished “projects” that will all absolutely be tackled “one day.” Because making a lamp isn’t as simple as sticking a lightbulb on top and calling it a day.

No, the tricky bit will be drilling a straight hole from the bottom to the top of the stock. This is the sort of task that sounds easy until you try it and end up with an exit hole halfway through the cheekpiece, turning your elegant lamp into something out of a postmodern art exhibit titled Misery in Wood. I may have to take the drastic step of cutting the stock into sections, drilling each piece, and reassembling it like some sort of mahogany Frankenstein’s monster.

Will I ever get round to it? Probably. Eventually. Maybe after the GT6 stops being a pile of parts. Or when the weather turns. Or when I finally find the right drill bit. Until then, those stocks will sit quietly, judging me from the corner of the workshop – mute reminders of yet another brilliant idea that’s just one straight hole away from glory.