Thanks, everyone, for the compliments......I needed a decent reading light in the courtyard. The brass on this was in pretty bad shape, and I had some crystals left over from a chandelier project. It's been outside for a year, and some of the blue paint has peeled a bit. I should have primed it. Word to the wise....
Some of the plates I use are ones I made myself from clay, so that made drilling the hole pretty easy----but that's not an option for most people!
Holes in glass or pottery can be drilled with an arrow-shaped glass drill bit that's readily available at most hardware stores. I use my cordless drill. If the plate is a really hard material like stoneware, having someone trickle a little water on the hole while it's being drilled will help keep it from cracking. But a terra-cotta drain dish turned upside-down would do the job just as well, and be really easy to drill. You just need to make sure the diameter of the plate is slightly larger than what you're putting it on. I have some that are just a shade small, and they do get rainwater in them. When it freezes, the glass can crack. The ones that stay completely dry are fine outside here all winter (down to low 20s).
The little light bulb sitting down in the hole usually does a good enough job of keeping the solar collector from blowing off, but if you're in a high-wind area a dollop of hot glue might be a good idea. That way you can easily pop the collector off when you need to change the battery in about a year.
