I took 1847s and soldered about 2"s of solid hookup wire to the center contact, then roughly 1/4" of 9/32" brass tubing to the ground base of the bulb. The solder will flow just like it does when soldering plumbing, USE FLUX! Use the old Fisher festoon as your template, but split the difference so that both brass pieces you cut are the SAME length to fit the clips well. Where I bent the wire to make it exit the tubing I put a little shrink wrap just for insurance, shove it down tight to cover the center contact well as you shrink it, the bend holds it there. Bend that solid core wire 180 degrees so it runs back down the length of your little assembly. Hold your bulb with it's new base and the second piece of brass tubing (at the top of the bulb obviously) all together in a wooden vise and solder the wire to it. I also made note of both bulb's filament orientation so that I would have equal intensity coming from both sides. This was easy to maintain as I had NOS G.E.s and the filaments were in the same spots with both. I used the little retaining pins on the base as my visual reference.
This sounds like a lot of effort but it's not. Harder for me to type this than to make up the damn lamps!
After fabricating a pair (the planning, which is the real time expenditure with most things) I could whip 'em out now on demand.
Painted the envelope except where it lined up with the dial's edge and was done (just to be thorough).
Fit it in the slot and tweaked it so the wire lay flush along the edge of the glass. They fit perfectly and look like a manufactured product for this purpose if you didn't know any better. I'm generally not into rigging things, but with this I am 100% satisfied with the outcome.
Used brand name 3/8"W x 3/16"T Frost King weather strip from the 99 Cent store to do my dial taping. (don't know how they get it and sell it so cheap and it's FRESH, I know because I did a re-do to clean a second time and it took me an hour to get all the sticky **** off, a first for me with this stuff, usually it's the other way around. The same 17' long roll's around $3 bucks everywhere else.
The beauty of it is (I think), the 1847 only draws .15mA @ 6.3V and runs very cool; it is rated as a 1 watt bulb. If you want brighter there are many bayonet types in this family and size. A #47 will work fine too and is a little brighter. They are dirt cheap, readily available and the piece of brass tubing is only $2 dollars at ACE (about 11"s or so, give or take). That's enough to make dial lamps for a long time.
My apologies to all you lamp vendors out there if I have offended thee, but I just have a thing for NOT paying good money for crap from china if I can help it (and I realize that it is not your fault) and I can make it myself with good quality results, both functionally and aesthetically.
No harm intended.
Thomas
