Nipples were cut off. Now what?

[bungalowrescue]

Never thought I'd have to write that sentence. But here we are. We recently had to have our old 1920s home rewired, and in the process discovered some sconce boxes that had been plastered over. Now that we've discovered them, we would like to use them. Problem is, someone back in 1941 (we found the newspaper they stuffed in there) cut the nipples off so that now we cannot screw new nipples in to hang the sconces. What can we do? First pic has plaster in the middle. Second pic is a cleaner but still cut off nipple. How do we get the cut off nipple out of there?

 

[Eddie_T]

I used an internal cam wrench to remove short nipples on water heater. Lowes has a set for $11.78 but implies that a special wrench is needed. I think I just used a wrench from my toolbox.

 

[bud16415]

Never thought I'd have to write that sentence. But here we are. We recently had to have our old 1920s home rewired, and in the process discovered some sconce boxes that had been plastered over. Now that we've discovered them, we would like to use them. Problem is, someone back in 1941 (we found the newspaper they stuffed in there) cut the nipples off so that now we cannot screw new nipples in to hang the sconces. What can we do? First pic has plaster in the middle. Second pic is a cleaner but still cut off nipple. How do we get the cut off nipple out of there?
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I’m not sure what I’m looking at here. Way back in the day they used to run gas pipes in the walls and then hook up gas lights. Where I live the Amish still do this.



Some where along the way it looks like yours were converted to electric and the wires were added. This was also common to old homes here.



I don’t know what type wire I’m seeing there and you said it was plastered over that would not be to code along with the wire used (maybe).

Before I hooked anything up I would dig deeper and figure out what is in your walls.