We picked some Tiki torches for next to nothing at an estate sale and wanted to install them inside out Tiki room. Rumamok saw the “Feit Electric 3-Watt T60 Flame Design LED Light Bulb Soft White” bulbs at Home Depot and came up with the idea of inserting them into the torches so we could use them inside. I put it off for a while because I had heard that reaming out bamboo was a pain in the butt.
I finally decided it can’t be that bad because electricians use a special bit to run wire through walls and ceilings, so I borrowed our neighbors “Flex Auger Bit” from any electrical tools department at the big box stores and we bought a lamp kit from Home Depot.
I was a little nervous because the bit significantly bent and wobbly, but I connected it to my cordless drill and it reamed out the entire length of the torch in seconds. I thought it was beginners luck, but it went through the second one nearly as fast.
I went to the wall and cut the base of the torch at an angle with the length we were looking for. Then I ran the lamp cord through the torch length and connected the bulb. I wrapped the bulb in some rope to hide all the electrical and shiny bits, intending to soak it all in Elmer’s glue to keep it in place, but never got around to it.
Then I took a piece of scrap wood and cut it into two rectangles. I used a hole saw to cut a hole in each board to hold the torches and then added a couple of pocket screw holes to hold it to the wall. We put the torches through the wood and eyeballed a good height before screwing it into the wall. I’ll replace these with something similar that matches whatever we put between the two torches in the future.
We already had a horizontal bamboo runner in the middle of the panel, so I notched it with a file where we wanted the torches and fit the bottom of the torch into the bamboo and ran the wire under the horizontal bamboo to the plug.
Overall, it was very easy and the whole project was finished in a couple of hours. We’re happy with it.
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