I'm getting good at this, even though I say so myself.
I refashioned my lampshade formers by adapting some aluminium vacuum cleaner tubing that was spare. Much thinner than the cardboard tubes I was using, so no danger of the resined cloth draping down sticking to the tube.
I've bought some more LED display stands, which will probably take another week to arrive and I also bought some phone charger plugs with dual USB connections, so two lamps will connect to a single plug.
In the caravan, the beds have USB phone charge points next to them, so they can be used without having to trail wires to a plug socket.
I'm very pleased with the result and, with them being mainly white, the shades are far more illuminative than the dictator chic ones.
I did come across one problem. When I've applied the resin, I spray cooking oil on the fabric to stop it sticking to the former and itself. The spray I use has a yellowish tinge which can get trapped in the resin and give a slight blemish. It's only noticeable very close up and isn't at all serious, but I will have to switch to clear peanut oil.
The Mk V shades will be offset and have a fall from rear to front. The Mk VI will have a lower, fluted skirt coming about 1/3rd of the way up, like the genuine one below:
The Mk VII will be a full-blown chandelier...
Here's the Mk V under construction. You can clearly see the fall in the flutes.
The two front corners are perfectly positioned, as is one of the rear corner flutes, but I simply couldn't get the final one positioned correctly and it's half way between a convex and concave fold.
I placed this on the former while soaking wet and let it cure overnight. It was still damp enough in the morning to separate some of the folds which had stuck to each other and some of the corners weren't adequately covered in resin, but this was resolved by applying resin on a paintbrush (I do wish I could spray the resin, but any sprayer would be destroyed in the process). Hand sanitizer easily cleans the brushes, but the type we currently have is the gel, which is a bit more difficult to use than the watery liquid sanitizer.
And here it is before cementing into its resin base.
I've ordered some bling in the form of gold and black metal flakes, which I will put in the edge of the resin base (but not the centre, where the light sines through), so I'm waiting for that to arrive before proceeding with the finishing with a heat gun.
The cost of going through the iterations has been phenomenal, especially when I take into consideration that I practically destroyed an original Georgia Jacob that cost me £150 and was a Christmas present for Hay. However, the main cost was in making the production kit, which can now be reused and I can easily make more of.
I could easily knock out a couple of these in a day, possibly 2 pairs - the limiting factor is the space available to spread the curing, resined cloth. Each piece of cloth is 55cm x 55cm, so it takes a lot of space. Mass production requires a dipping tray and a curing line on which to hang the curing cloths (which would improve the texture). Just as well we started building my garage and workshop yesterday.
To be honest, I actually prefer my more contemporary lamps, as does Hay - they use more decorative material, stand on low-cost LED display stands, have USB connections, two can be linked to a plug with two USB ports and you can switch and swap shades easily for a variety of effects - a 21st century update to a classic design.
If I did start selling these, I'm not sure what to provide and what to charge. Adding the LED display stand (£5.99) and phone charger socket (£3,99) adds a tenner to the overall cost, yet they are easy to source for a purchaser, so there's a valid argument for just supplying the shades on their own. There again, people do like to receive a complete unit, but then there's the issue of how many USB ports a customer will want on a single plug (the more USB ports, the more expensive the plug). As for the time element - to all intents and purposes that's a sunk cost, as I'm primarily retired and so the time cost doesn't really enter into the equation - I wouldn't exactly be doing anything more worthwhile with my time. They're handmade and unique however and, in the current parlance, artisanal. I don't think £80 a pair as a complete kit with display stand and plug (choose two, single USB port plugs, or a single 2 port USB port plug) is way off the mark (£45 for a single).
The material is a variable cost, depending on what the customer wants, but £13 is a reasonable estimate. The amount of resin is difficult to gauge, as I bought a lot initially (£68 for 4kg). I suppose now that I'm a dab hand, I could get away with about 200 - 300gm of resin per shade. That's roughly a £8.50 per pair of shades. So that's roughly just over £40 for a pair.
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