I'm in the process of remodeling my rod-building room, and I was wondering what your suggestions were for lighting. In the past, I've made do with several lamps and insufficient light, but now I have some options.

The room is narrow and long, so any overhead light will be right above me. Also, along with overhead lighting, I'm going to have three or four clip on lamps that can be aimed at specific areas (i.e. wraps).

Right now, I'm thinking of getting a rather large flourescent light for the overhead light, plus the three or four clip-on lights for my actual building bench.

What do you think?

If you can sufficiently light the room with overhead flourescent lighting (and you can), I'd do that and skip the clip on lights. Go for efficient fixtures and cool white bulbs and I think you'll be happy. Just make sure to get enough so that the entire room is well lit. Don't skimp.

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Andrew,
In general, you want lighting that will give you excelent overall illumination, without any hot or too bright spots, and no shadows.
Most lighting designers find that the best way to provide that type illumination is with more individual lights of lower intensity, compared to a single or a few lights that are very bright.
You will often find that if the overall lighting level is a bit less bright, but without shadows is often better than a brighter, but shadowy room.

For my particular lighting, I chose to go with 4 foot dual bulb fixtures on a 4 foot grid. i.e a fixture every 4 feet, and spaced 4 feet apart.

Then, I use 50 watt halagon lights 1,2 or 3, as needed to illuminate the wrapping area. These lights have a head size of only 3 inches so that they can be positioned close - within 10 inches of the area being wrapped, without obstructing vision.
When I looked about for task lighting, I started with incadescent lights, but found that the size of the bulbs and the heat from the bulbs caused issues.
My next type lighting was to use a piano style light - i.e. a long thin incadescent bulb on a swing arm over with wrapping area. I used a low wattage 25 watt bulb and that actually worked pretty well.

Finally, I found the small halagon lights on swing arms with a very small head and containing halogen bulbs for a nice bright true light that have served me well in recent times.

The general rule from lighting designers is that you need quite bright light for detail work as is required for inspections and for the type work entailed by wrapping. But the general room lighting should be considerably less bright to allow a person to look away from his task work and rest his eyes in the less bright room.

The key thing in your room - with its long narrow nature is to get enough fixtures in the room so that you have overall uniform illumination without shadows.

AS long as you are talking about lighting, the color of walls and ceiling have a lot to do with the ability to have good vision. i.e. if the room has dark walls and or ceiling, any illumination in the room will be darker than if the room were finished in a lighter finish like white. White walls and ceilings will give maximum overall lighting in the room with minimum dollars being spent. The white walls and ceiling will tend to reflect any room light as compared to dark walls which tend to absorb the light.

Stay bright and out of the shadows.

Roger

p.s.
Here is a very general guide on typical lighting requirements:

[www.fullspectrumsolutions.com]

i.e. if you consider your build room a factory, then for the overall needs you see that you typically have a requirement of about 70-80 foot candle lighting in the overall area.
However, when you look at the area of detailed and or intricite work - i.e. guide wrapping, the requirements increase to about 100 foot candle lighting.

Take care
Roger

I three 4' 2-bulb flourescent fixtures over my L shaped bench. For room lighting, just incandescent bulbs.

I was VERY pleased when I gave natural day light bulbs a try and now all of my fixtures have them.



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Better to have and not need than to need and not have.

For what it is worth, I find that all flour traditional long bulbs bother me at times I also find that when a diffuser is used it just makes the light dimmer. What I found to work near my lathe in another room is a "pool table" light fixture. I have three compact flour bulbs in and find it to be an excellent source of light. Sufficient that I do not need auxilary lights So if it were me I would look to make a CFL bulb track lighting sort of system This way you could vary the amount of light you need by changing the bulbs. You could also mix and match to find a "wavelength" that suites you. Instead of clipons I found gooseneck cheap lamps work better for me.

I have found that fixed lighting-whatever type chosen-works better for me . I avoid moving anything-especially overhead because I try to lessen the chance that the dust bunny will visit when I'm not looking. As clean as I try to keep things I can bump one of my flour. fixtures above where I wrap and finish and in the light I can see the snow flurry I've created. I've thought about how nice it would be to have a movable, small, intense light that I could put directly over the spot where I'm working , but have not for the reasons mentioned.

I use fluorescent shop lights from Home Depot. They are suspended by chains and the distance from the bench can be adjusted. They are very affordable.

I have one over my work bench and one over my rod bench.

The overhead lights are halogen. C2

Another point to maybe consider.
In an environment were you have rotating machinery (lathe, table saw, drill press, etceteras) there is a very real concern that some combinations of flourescent lighting and moving machinery will cause the machine to appear as if it is not moving due to a strobe effect. If the frequency of the light (and flourescent light has a frequency) approaches the speed of a moving item it may look like it has stopped. If the machine runs rather quiet and smooth, as we all want our machines to, that could be a real problem for your fingers, mis-laying something on some equipment you didn't realize was on, etc. You can install a compination of incandescent and flourescent lights to avoid this. It merits looking into.
It would be a shame to have an accident with serious consequences over an issue you can avoid.

I found a couple of lights like this at the local good will store for my very bright task lighting needs, I think I paid something like $3 for each of them.
Simple, easy to swing over your work and give just the right amount of light for wrapping needs.
I built an elevated stand behind my wrapper to elevate the base of the lamp to the same level as the rods I am wrapping and then the swing arm is effective in covering a nice length of the rod.

[www.fadfusion.com]

I have my wrapper on rollers, so I roll the rod past my work station and thus don't have to have more than one task light and I don't have to move up and down the rod while wrapping.

Just a thought.

Take care
Roger

What I did was purchase an 8' track lighting section and 8 clearance track lights. They use 50watt halogin spotlights and can be positioned so that no matter where I sit on my rod bench I have light to work. The only shadowing I have it at the extreme ends of my 16' bench. I will be picking up a 4' track and 4 more lights this weekend to resolve that issue. Much easier on the eyes for me then flourecent tubes. THe light source comes from slightly behind me on the ceiling.

Stephen,
This sounds like an excellent idea.
Do you have drop down arms on the lights. or are the lights positioned tight against the ceiling.

Take care
Roger

My lights are up tight to the ceiling. The best thing about the whole set up I have now is it has been done for less then a hundred bucks by buying clearence light fixtures. I don't care if they match as long as my light is good.

If you want to use flourescent lighting use the T* or better yet the T5 type. Much higher output, more natural specturm, energy efficient and will not cause trobe effect as they are a higher frequency. With T5's you can use half the fixtures of regular bulbs and get more light output.

Agree with Gary about the T5 tubes...........daylight or cool white

I use a gooseneck light for my closeup lighting as I can adjust its angle to suit the location.....................very important if you wear glasses.
I have ditched the incandescent & then Halogen globes I used in that light and now use a mini CFL in cool white.

Don't know anything about the strobe effect , but I stumbled into T5 tubes when converting some AC flouros to operate on 12VDC supply for my remote cabin which only has solar. The difference in output and spectrum was quite astounding. With a solar system you are really chasing to save every amp of power consumption. The spot lights there I have converted to high output LEDs ...............output & spectrum available in those has improved heaps lately.