The PTA at my daughter's middle school is having an auction next week, and her band teacher came across an old student trumpet that she thought would make a nice lamp. Here is the result.

The mouthpiece of the trumpet had gotten stuck, and the tube had gotten ripped when trying to take it out. It was more to fix it than the trumpet was worth. So, I got asked to do the lamp conversion.

Here's what I did:

1. Cut off the mountpiece.
2. Drilled out the mouthpiece part in the trumpet body. This ended up ripping the tube the rest of the way off, but ultimately I got out the remainder of the mountpiece.
3. Epoxied a threaded tube into the main tube to fix the rip.
4. Epoxied a threaded tube into the main tube to attach the lamp socket.
5. Cut off the valves
6. Threaded string from the mouthpiece out the bell (using a shop vacuum to pull the string)
7. Built an octagonal base out of vertical grain fir, with a routed edge and routed a path in the bottom of the base for the cord.
8. Attached a bit of closet pole to the base to support the trumpet.
9. Cut holes in the support and base for the cord
10. Pulled the cord through the base and the trumpet
11. Wired and attached the socket
12. Epoxied the trumpet to the base.
13. Finished the base in Watco danish oil
14. Glued some fabric to the bottom of the base
15. Cut a bit off the mouthpiece
16. Tapped the mouthpiece
17. Installed the shade, and used the mouthpiece to hold it on.

A pretty cool result