Battery

ZJH90

Member
Hey, I am designing our musical, Cabaret, and my director told me that she wants lights on every table that appears in the cabaret. Well, I am not about to wire every single one of these little lights, and I remember (when I knew nothing about theater) we used this battery pack type thing to light up a set of stairs once. Where can i find these battery things? All help is greatly appreciated.
 
Well, I think you shoot for something like this:
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If your props department is good they can either give it the look you want, or you just pull the guts out and put them in the lamp of your choosing.

you could also take the lamp of your choosing, and then go to an electronics shop and pick up some C or D size battery harnesses and wire in some low voltage lamps and a switch. You want to use C or D batteries, as they are designer for higher current applications (ie lamps). The best DIY solution is, if you can build a lantern battery:
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into the table and then wire that up through the table lamp to a 6v lamp, it will last a long time (they are designed to light lanterns after all).
 
Sorry, what I meant was that we already have lamps we want to use, but we need to get power to all of them, and I need some kind of small battery system we can have at each table. Hope the clears things up...
 
Sorry, what I meant was that we already have lamps we want to use, but we need to get power to all of them, and I need some kind of small battery system we can have at each table. Hope the clears things up...
Right, so like I said:
The best DIY solution is, if you can build a lantern battery:
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into the table and then wire that up through the table lamp to a 6v lamp, it will last a long time (they are designed to light lanterns after all).
So, you would take the lamps that you have and remove the standard lamp base and guts and then wire in a low voltage lamp base and lamp. If there is room in the base of the lamp (often there is) you may be able to fit some C or D batteries in there. If no space in the lamp then as I said before, you could pop the wiring through the table (or around the US side) and mount a battery under the table to which you wire the lamp. We do this kind of thing all the time. For the show that we currently have running we retrofitted a bunch of oil lanterns to run with a small bulb and a battery. Not hard to do as long as you have some soldering skills, some basic DC circuit knowledge, and a hot glue gun.

I will post some photos of our battery operated gear maybe tomorrow if I remember to bring in my camera.
 
How many tables are you talking here? Go get some zip cord and just wire then all in... I think you would be happier because you would actually have control and would not have to endlessly be changing batteries.
 
If you're trying to figure out a way to get battery power to an Edison table lamp with a medium screw base without changing the wiring, I think you'd be outta luck. :-(
 
Yea, there are no 120v AC batteries. If you want to do this with batteries, your going to need to do some slicing and dicing, as icewolf said.

Good luck,
Zac
 
I assume they don't have to be that bright, so I would just go to pep boys, or another auto supply store and dig around for solutions. Of course, if the lamps you are modifying are 120 volt table lamps, and you're converting them to 6 volts, sooner or later someone is going to plug one in and that's dangerous. If I was doing it, I would modify the light to fit a 6 volt bulb and then cut the plug off and replace it with alligator clips and use the above mentioned batteries. Of course, if the lamps are on loan or must be returned, then there is a problem.
 
If it doesn't need to be that bright, you could start with some battery-powered Christmas candle decorations. Then make the shades yourself.

Joe
 

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