Steampunk Menorah

First of all, much credit must go to this Instructable: https://www.instructables.com/id/Copper-pipe-candel... which gave me the idea. But in our house if candles are going to be lit, then it'd be for some religious reason or other. So, I decided to make a chanukkah (hanukah, hannukkah, etc.) menorah or chanukkiah along the same lines. As you can see from this photo it was finished in time (only just) for the first night!

I toyed around with many thoughts about how to arrange it but for a first attempt I went all traditional - at least in the design.`

Step 1: Gather Your Materials

Being in the UK, I put in an online order to Screwfix because they were cheaper than a DIY store. For this design, I used 15mm copper heating pipe, plus end feed fittings. I got through 9 T junctions, three elbows and 9 15>10mm reducers. I had the crank pulley from a car engine for a base, so I picked up some 22-28 and 15-22 reducers as well plus 2m of 15mm pipe. I'm using the 15-10 reducers as candle holders and leaving them loose. I hope that this means I'll be able to remove them and effectively clean out a lot of the old candle wax!

I also gathered together a few basic tools. A tape measure, some metal epoxy, a builder's square and a pipe cutter.

Step 2: Basic Layout

This was just to check that my back-of-an-envelope calculations were right. You can clearly see that I have everything I need!

Once this was done, I shoved the end of the pipe into a T piece and scratched it. A quick measure proved that it went in 12mm so I set about cutting nearly 20 25mm lengths of pipe with the cutter. I wanted to do all the cutting first as the epoxy has only a 5 minute window when it's workable.

The photos you can see here are me assembling it piece by piece, just pushing it together to check the fit and spacing. As well as the joins, I cut a short length for the top of each candlestick, so the 15-10 reducer would have something to locate onto.

Step 3: Out With the Glue!

Here's me gluing it together. I think I ended up using three small lots of epoxy as it kept going hard. I had to tap one joint together with a hammer and there was a lot of clean up using meths and kitchen roll as it tended to spread a bit. I laid it flat on a table to get it straight and used the builders square to make sure the shammuz was straight out.

I could only buy the big reducers in pairs, so I experimented and found that putting one in first upside down acted as a stop to make the second one just sit perfectly in the pulley. I had to use a scrap piece of 22mm pipe to join the two reducers plus a piece of 15mm pipe to connect that on to the menorah itself!

I left about half an hour for the epoxy to harden before fitting the menorah onto the base.