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Step 8Making the struts
Your struts are just long sticks, a few cms longer than your base lamp size. These are 330mm long and have some holes bored through them. Half of these are 20mm wide (for the top half of the lamp), and the other half are 25mm wide for extra strength. I don't honestly think it makes much difference like. If you have a stronger, thinner material, then use it by all means, but you will have to adjust the plans for the base connectors to compensate.
Cutting out:
Since they are just straight sticks, it'll be easiest to just measure the struts out by hand rather than using any template. Cut out eight long struts (330mm long) that are 25mm wide and eight that are 20mm wide. Cut out four short struts (180mm long) that are 25mm wide and four that are 20mm wide.
Making holes:
You should end up with 16 long struts and 8 short struts. Print or draw a paper template for the positions of the holes in the struts, since it's important that they are all the same. Remember that the middle hole in the long strut is not dead centre: There's a short half and a long half. As you punch the holes using your metal pointy thing, mark on each strut which is the short half - except for one set of struts, this end should always be pointing up in the lamp.
Widen the holes until the bamboo skewers are free to turn without friction in the holes, but not so much that they are loose and have space to jiggle. That's a technical term, you understand.
Here's the science:
The reason for the asymmetry in the long struts is to raise the crossover point of each strut by a few millimetres - introducing a natural "uprightness" bias into the design to counteract it's tendency to collapse flat when pushed down low. That's the theory at least. In practice however, the offset prevents the lamp from going down low enough if they are all installed that way round. I fixed this problem by reversing one layer of the struts, so the short half is pointing downwards. This seemed to get the best of both world - There is some uprightness bias, and it can still go low. I'm not entirely convinced it's worth the extra hassle of dealing with asymmetry, but hey ho, it works!
Add spacers:
A few of the struts need to have some special spacers added to them in order to fit in with the base uprights. Cut six 25mm square pieces of board the same thickness as your uprights.
Now you have your pile of struts, that's the hard boring bit done. Celebrate and rest your blistered hands! I recommend tea.
Cutting out:
Since they are just straight sticks, it'll be easiest to just measure the struts out by hand rather than using any template. Cut out eight long struts (330mm long) that are 25mm wide and eight that are 20mm wide. Cut out four short struts (180mm long) that are 25mm wide and four that are 20mm wide.
Making holes:
You should end up with 16 long struts and 8 short struts. Print or draw a paper template for the positions of the holes in the struts, since it's important that they are all the same. Remember that the middle hole in the long strut is not dead centre: There's a short half and a long half. As you punch the holes using your metal pointy thing, mark on each strut which is the short half - except for one set of struts, this end should always be pointing up in the lamp.
Widen the holes until the bamboo skewers are free to turn without friction in the holes, but not so much that they are loose and have space to jiggle. That's a technical term, you understand.
Here's the science:
The reason for the asymmetry in the long struts is to raise the crossover point of each strut by a few millimetres - introducing a natural "uprightness" bias into the design to counteract it's tendency to collapse flat when pushed down low. That's the theory at least. In practice however, the offset prevents the lamp from going down low enough if they are all installed that way round. I fixed this problem by reversing one layer of the struts, so the short half is pointing downwards. This seemed to get the best of both world - There is some uprightness bias, and it can still go low. I'm not entirely convinced it's worth the extra hassle of dealing with asymmetry, but hey ho, it works!
Add spacers:
A few of the struts need to have some special spacers added to them in order to fit in with the base uprights. Cut six 25mm square pieces of board the same thickness as your uprights.
Now you have your pile of struts, that's the hard boring bit done. Celebrate and rest your blistered hands! I recommend tea.
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