Redwood and Maple lamp

Sometime back I posted an article on this site detailing the construction of a couple of lamps I built out of solid cedar. I am now in a lamp-building mood again, and so I threw together a new one – basically out of scrap wood that I just had laying around.

This one has recycled redwood top and bottom plates, with a solid maple post that has lots of visible grain activity. The post was cut at an angle from maple I had left over when I cut down a small and problematic tree last year, and the piece had been in storage in my shop to get it fully dried out. It is beveled to eight sides and top and bottom plates are glued and screwed in place. I stained the thing with Minwax red-oak stain, and have not clear coated it with anything, and probably will not. I kind of like the matted look of the simple stain.

The big chore with the thing was drilling the 15-inch long hole through the middle to handle the wire. I wanted the socket on top to aim straight up, so I drilled the long hole down the length of the post (which put it at an angle), and then had to drill a correctly vertical hole in the top center that would intersect the angled hole. It was close, but the procedure worked. I then threaded a standard, hollow socket shaft into that vertical hole (precisely size drilled to accommodate it tightly), and then installed a final, black-colored plastic sleeve (glued over a wood dowel, also drilled) that has the screw sticking out the top just the right amount to attach the socket and harp.

My wife did not know about this project and the new lamp replaces one in the living room that I did not like too much (cheaply built). When she comes home from work this afternoon I am not going to say anything and see how long it takes for her to notice the thing. She may hate it (wives tend to be unpredictable) and it may end up going into storage, with the old lamp back in place.

In any case, it was a fun project and only cost a couple of bucks to build (for the socket and wire).

Howard Ferstler