Oak floor lamp with stained glass shade -Build thread

Looking great!

December 25th Update:

Well, I didn't get the lamp completed in time for Christmas. I did complete the lampshade and that is what Margaret received as one of her gifts on Christmas morning:



Picking up since the last last update of this thread, here are the steps that were taken to complete the lampshade:

Four slots for ventilation were inserted into the top piece. I made the slots by drilling holes at the ends, cutting the sides with a jig saw, then cleaning up the slots with a file:



The top was then glued in place. After the glue dried, the top and the joints were sanded and rounded using 80 grit paper using a Festool Rotex 150 sander.

Then, the whole frame was sanded in stages using 120, 150, 1870, 220, 320 paper with a Festool Duplex linear sander as well as hand sanded with Festool Granat 120, 180, and 320 foam backed pads:



Finally, one coat of polymerized tung oil sealer and two coats of tung oil were applied leaving a day between each application.

I would just consider this the gift that keeps giving ;-) First the shade, then the base. If she plays her cards right she may get a light bulb and a cord.

The lamp is looking great Frank. Thanks for taking the time to post the build pics. I always enjoy riding along with other's projects. I am a big fan of the style you are using. That sort of stuff just feels like home to me although that is not the style my parents had. Can't explain it, I just enjoy it.

glenn bradley said:

I would just consider this the gift that keeps giving ;-) First the shade, then the base. If she plays her cards right she may get a light bulb and a cord.

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Sounds like a good plan.

The lamp is looking great Frank. Thanks for taking the time to post the build pics. I always enjoy riding along with other's projects. I am a big fan of the style you are using. That sort of stuff just feels like home to me although that is not the style my parents had. Can't explain it, I just enjoy it.

Click to expand...

Thanks Glenn. Margaret and I have become great fans of the various Arts and Crafts styles. We don't have very many items of those styles in our house right now and that gives me lots of oportunity for future projects.

I finally built the base for the lamp

(part 1 of 5)

The lampshade plan was for a table lamp but I thought that I could easily extend the plan to make a floor lamp base. So, in January, I made a prototype base out of scrap wood but it didn’t seem right. Somehow, the in extending the table lamp base to a floor lamp base then proportions got out of whack; so I set the project aside. As with so many things that I set aside, it was not until many months later that I got back to it. This time I decided to make a base using a floor lamp plan that I found in Wood magazine. (The plan for the shade came from Fine Woodworking.)



The rough quarter-sawn white oak that I put into my work shed to acclimatize a year ago:



is certainly now well acclimatized.

I planed the boards I am using on my new Hammer jointer-planer combo. But, rather than using the jointer to make a square edge, I prefer to use my Festool track saw equipped with a Panther blade for ripping:



Using the same saw, I ripped a the 33 millimetre board that had just been jointed into a couple of pieces approximately 65 millimetres wide. These pieces will later be glued together to form the floor lamp’s column. Once these boards have been glued together, I will trim the column to be 60 millimetres square.

 
Next, I routed a channel wide enough to hold a 3/8 inch threaded rod in the inside centre of both the column boards:



The rod fits well:


The short piece of rod that came with the standard lamp kit that I purchased was much too short to provide adequate support, so I had to cut a longer piece from a separately purchased rod:



I want the rod to be both adjustable and removable so I embedded a bolt within the channel. In order to do this, my drill press was used to “carve” a slot at right angles to the channel and a little way down in the channel:


I glued the two sides of the post together with the bolt attached to the rod and crossed my fingers to hope it would be possible to unscrew the rod once the glue had dried. It was! Even better, it was then possible later to screw the rod back into the captured bolt.

The post was then planed down to 6 centimetres on each side (being careful to keep the channel in the middle):

I finally built the base for the lamp

(part 2 of 5)

The lamp base plan calls for the exclusive use of oak but, since the shade utilizes both oak and walnut, I decided to use some walnut on the base as well. So the four pole supports are to be walnut. In this photo the pattern for a support is being transferred to a template make use of a sliding bevel and a blending curve (both purchased at Lee Valley):



The column support pieces were cut out of this 25 millimetre thick walnut board using a Festool jigsaw equipped with a scrolling blade:


Unfortunately, this particular blade snapped when it hit a knot:



That surprised me. I have used this type of blade a lot over the last nine years in two different Festool jigsaws and have seldom known one to break. I carried on with the replacement blade and the results were great in that all four column support pieces were almost exactly the same size. I ganged them together with a couple of clamps and sanded the curve a little bit with 80 grit paper on a Festool linear sander (Duplex) in order to remove the slight differences:



The feet are constructed from two oak blocks assembled with a half lap joint. I cut the large dados for the joint using several passes with a “newish” Forrest dado-set on a General 650 table saw:



I’m quite happy with the joint.

I cut a 19 degree bevel at both ends of both feet, again using my table saw:

I finally built the base for the lamp

(part 3 of 5)

Next, I needed to cut these marked pieces out of the feet:



I decided to use my large bandsaw for the angled cuts and the dado blade set on my table saw for the straight cuts:



The results were acceptable:


The cuts shown above will be at the bottom of the foot assembly, so will not normally be seen. Nevertheless, I cleaned them up a bit with a file and a hand sanding block. The four angled cuts at outside top corners of the feet will be seen, so I hauled out my old and, now, little used Delta stationary belt sander and tidied up those cuts:



It did a great job!

 
I rounded the appropriate edges of all the parts made so far for the lamp base using a ¼ inch roundover bit to a router mounted in my (home made) router table:



I use a Triton 2.25 hp router in the table and it is connected a Festool vacuum.

Grooves for splines were cut in the bottom of the column and in all four column supports:



This went well except for one small glitch:



I cut the groove starting at the wrong end (that is, the visible top) in one of the supports. Later on, I glued a small piece of walnut into the top of the groove and the goof is difficult to detect.

I finally built the base for the lamp

(part 4 of 5)
All parts were sanded with my Festool Rotex 150 and Deltex 93 sanders using a progression of 80-120-150-180-220 grits. Most of the sanding was done with the Rotex but the Deltex came in handy for some surfaces because it can get right into the corners:



One thing that I do when sanding for a prolonged period, is to frequently clean the paper with a crepe block (purchased at Lee Valley). The block does a great job as can be seen in these before and after photos:



The splines were glued into the column:



 
The plans called for 3 inch #8 screws to attach the column to the feet and 2.5 inch #8 screws to attach the supports to the feet. Because one of the surfaces in all these butt joints is an end grain meaning that glue will not work well, I think that these screws would not be strong enough. Instead, I used 4.5 inch long ¼ inch lag bolts to attach the column and 4 inch long #12 screws to attach the supports. In the picture below, I am pre-drilling the holes in the foot assembly.



In the past, I have had screws and bolts snap off in very hard wood and, to avoid this, I prepared each hole in the column in advance by screwing a lag bolt to a suitable depth then removing it:



In the next photo, the feet, column, and supports have all been assembled and the lamp has been wired with a tri-light socket and an extra long lamp cord:



I finished the lamp with polymerized tung oil. First, a coat of tung oil sealer was applied:



then wiped after 10 minutes. After one day, a mixture of one part sealer and two parts oil was applied then wiped. This mixture was applied and wiped two more times with a 24 hour interval between each application.

I finally built the base for the lamp

(part 5 of 5)

Here are photos of the lamp being tested in my workshed, the first using a flash and the second without a flash:



Unfortunately, the second picture does not capture the glow of the light through the stained glass. I find the light as seen through the glass on the lowest setting of the tri-light bulb to very relaxing.I think that too much of the lamp socket is visible below the shade and am going to attempt the get a shorter lamp harp in order to lower the shade. It should be possible to lower the shade by about five centimetres.

Here is a photo of the lamp in its place in our living room:

For anyone who may have been waiting for me to upload all the photos to the last few posts in this thread, I have now done so.

OK, I managed to find a shorter harp and further modified that harp's shape employing a file, an anvil, and a hammer. This allowed me to lower the shade by about 8 centimetres and this means that one does not see the socket when looking straight on at the lamp. I am much happier with the appearance now.

Classy looking lamp Frank

Great tutorial as well. I learn something from every one of your builds. Thanks.