Candle Lantern

Candle lantern from a plan I bought online. The frame is Koa from Kauai, Hawaii. The base is oak, stained dark. The Koa is finished with Danish oil. Whole shebang topcoated with poly.

Except for a very few simple things, I am totally happy with how this came together. I took my time because I knew I could not replace the wood.

A bit of a story regarding this:

Went on vacation to Kauai in February. My wife found a bowl for sale in a gift shop that was nice. She was set on buying it until I flipped it over and found the “Made in the Phillipines” label. She and I really wanted local wood and local craftsperson.

So we looked and looked. And we found a store that had a lot of wooden items for sale. Here we found a nice wooden bowl. The store had everything from simple wooden bowls and boxes to very ornate items for great sums of money.

Whle there, they also had for sale paper bags full of odds and ends pieces of Koa. I had never heard of Koa before this trip, but I liked how it looked on the display pieces. I wanted the paper bag, but realized I couldn’t fit it in my luggage. When I said as much out loud, the woman running the store says: There is a lumber yard out back. Take a look!

So I looked… They had hundreds of suitcase sized pieces for sale. Some curly, some not. Most of which would fit easily into a suitcase. I bought two pieces for myself and two pieces for my brother-in-law as a Christmas present.

When we checked out, I commented to the shop owner that I had no clue what I planned to make with the wood. Her comment, with slight asian accent: “you are like a woman in a fabric store. She doesn’t buy fabric to make something. She buys it because it is pretty.”

Most people go to Hawaii and buy souveniers: T-shirts, mugs, etc. I buy lumber!