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Lamp Shades

Project by Peter O posted 664 days ago 633 views 1 time favorited 5 comments Add to Favorites Watch

This started out as one of those relaxing weekend projects. I actually had a day to do some woodworking for myself instead of for clients. The lamp shades on a couple of our floor lamps had been damaged in a move, so I thought I’d spend an afternoon building new shades.

Recently, several installations have required me to do some cutting with handsaws. I found that my handsaw skills were a little rusty, so I thought the lampshades would be a perfect project for some handsaw practice. While I was at it, I decided not to calculate and measure every cut, and instead used a story stick and bevel gauge.

Cutting the pieces to length and cutting the angled half-laps went pretty well, but took a lot longer than I had expected. I don’t know where my good back-saw wandered off to, so I used a small pull-saw. The cutting would have been faster and the joints would have been tighter if I had used the right saw. I glued up the eight little frames and was pleased with how well the pieces went together – not perfect, but like I said – my handsaw skills are a little rusty, and I wasn’t really using the right saw. Eight panels means 32 joints – further evidence that you can never have too many clamps.

The afternoon was shot, so I left the parts in glue-up and returned to them the next day. Of course, by then the glue squeeze-out was set up, and had to be removed from all the nooks and crannies with a card scraper and a chisel. Once the glue was off, I routed a recess for the panels and cut the bevel for the frames to attach to each other and glued them up. I cleaned off that glue and slopped on some Black Walnut Danish Oil. The fabric panels were cut out of the old lampshades (one yellow and one blue-grey) and attached in the recesses with 23ga pins.

I tried to use the hardware out of the old lampshades, but both of them broke, so I fabricated an “X” out of ΒΌ” BB ply to attach the shade to the lamp.

This relaxing, afternoon project wound up stretching out to a little over eight hours! Still, it was a fun diversion, and I got to practice some skills I don’t use often.

-- http://www.north40custom.com -- http://north40studios.etsy.com --


5 comments so far

View Thos. Angle's profile

Thos. Angle

4013 posts in 858 days


posted 664 days ago

Looks to me like it came out pretty darn good, Peter. Somthing to do while we watch it snow?? This global warming is about to freeze me to death down here on the desert. LOL Got lots of wood for the fire.

-- Thos. Angle

View cajunpen's profile

cajunpen

5968 posts in 962 days


posted 664 days ago

Great looking lamp shade.

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

View Scott Bryan's profile

Scott Bryan

20707 posts in 718 days


posted 664 days ago

These are very nice lamp shades. I know that I would not have the initiative to try these with nothing more than hand tools- maybe that is why my hand skills are lacking. I admire and respect anyone who can use hand tools to create a project like this.

This is an inspirational project.

Thanks for sharing.

-- With God's help all things are possible- even woodworking. Woodworking is not just a hobby, it is an (expletive deleted) expensive hobby.

View rikkor's profile

rikkor

11335 posts in 770 days


posted 664 days ago

Great job. They really look nice.

View mrtrim's profile

mrtrim

1698 posts in 776 days


posted 663 days ago

some guys have all the fun ! great job peter

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