A Radiant bond between Friendship and Whiskey !!!

Making someone happy with your hard work and witnessing it is truly magical. The feeling just gives you goosebumps all across your body and you feel inner peace. That's something that the team had experienced for the first time when they made the Jack Daniel Lamp for one of their friend and man wasn't she happy.

The Jack Daniel Lamp in its full glory

You should have not been born yet if you haven't heard about Jack Daniel. The top-selling American Tennessee whiskey in the world and of course Team Degon's drink of choice. And you bet they have a lot of empty bottles lying around. But throwing away stuff is something that the team was never keen about. So they looked for the right moment and opportunity to build something using it. And it came finally in the form of a friend's birthday surprise and a challenge.

So a member of their team challenged the rest of them to create something beautiful and charming with just a budget of Rs.500 for his friend's birthday surprise. And he being part of Degon knew they never backed up from a challenge.

Well, it was immediate that the team wanted to use the Jack Daniel bottle to make her a gift but it had to be special and must carry a message with it that made her smile every time she looked at it. So they finally decided to make a lamp out of it. The electronics were extremely simple. A 6-watt incandescent bulb, a bulb holder, two meters long wire with a 2 point plug and a switch to control it. It was that basic. The next part was the hole that had been drilled behind the bottle. They had to take it to a professional because they lacked the diamond drill bit which is mainly used to drill through the toughened glass.

Attaching the holder to the bottle

How to attach the bulb holder to the bottle? was actually the trickiest part that they had faced during the project and solution is quite interesting. The team while buying the Stainless Steel wire which was used to make the frame for the lampshade stumbled upon a drain pipe socket and coincidently it was a perfect fit on the bottle and also securely kept the holder in place.

Now they began to work on the frame for the lampshade. To make it a bit different the team decided to go with a cuboidal design something that is not common in lamp designs. At first, the steel pieces were attached together using electrical tape as they thought it would be sufficient to hold the cloth's weight. But they soon realised that the frame was completely unstable and their best option was to weld all the joints together. After some searching, they got hold of a gas welder who welded all the joints together and now the frame was completed.

Wodd Shavings inside the bottle

Now they shifted their attention to the bottle itself. The first thing that they did was to design a custom Jack Daniel label for the bottle. They looked for the original label online and scaled it to size, then modified it by adding Pisces and Gemini Star Signs on either side to symbolize friendship make it more personal for her. The next thing that the team had to think was what had to be put inside the bottle? Their discussion ranged from glass beads to marbles to pearls and so on. But finally, after thinking a lot they came to the conclusion of using wood shavings. The first and main reason for this choice was that it symbolized the traditional technique of ageing whiskey in wooden barrels and second being that the wood shavings can be easily put inside the bottle and also made the lamp lightweight.

Now the only part that was remaining was to make a cloth enclosure on the frame to disperse the light. So jute cloth bags were used to make the enclosure and it even added a rustic look to it. But at Degon, everything has a surprise inside it. And for that, they wanted to add a secret message which will only show up when the lamp was turned on and this done was by adding dual jute cloth layers which they recycled from shopping bags, on the front side. In between the layers the message "You are my Whiskey !" was kept. So whenever she turned the lamp on, the message was shown. Also as a finishing touch, the Jack Daniel writings were highlighted using a black sharpie.

And the Jack Daniel Lamp was finally completed. Her reaction when she received the lamp was just priceless and seeing her happiness motivated the entire team and realised them they can bring smiles on faces with their skills.

Proudly done by DEGON CUSTOMS.....

To see more about this project and her reaction video, check out our Instagram Feed.