Introduction: Turned Pallet Wood Lamp

About: I get a real kick out of completing projects with as low a budget as possible. It's usually pretty easy to collect almost all the parts necessary to make some pretty cool stuff. I also enjoy playing music and …

I came across this extremely cool mosaic lamp shade a few days ago and instantly knew I had to build a lamp for it. I've been wanting to try my first segmented turning for a while now, so I thought I would incorporate that into this project. Furthermore, I thought the lamp should sit upon a base consisting of four pillars made on the scroll saw. Come along and see how I made this vision a reality.

Step 1: Preparing the Wood

If you are familiar with using a wood lathe, then bare with me while I explain a bit to those who are not. A wood turning project begins with a piece of wood called a "blank." The blank can be just one block of wood, such as a log straight from a tree. Or you can cut lots of little pieces of wood and glue them all together to create your own blank. This is called a "segmented" turning. That is where tons of possibilities come into the picture.

For this project, I decided to make a handful of hexagons and stack them all together. To make the hexagons, I set the miter gauge on my table saw to thirty degrees and cut out a bunch of wedges. Then I set six of them at a time on a piece of masking tape along a straight edge and glued them up. The tape is used as a clamp to apply pressure while the glue dries.

Once all the hexagons were finished drying, I glued all of them together in a stack. I put a little circular piece of wood on the very top, and a big solid piece of wood on the bottom to mount the faceplate to.

Step 2: Scroll Saw Time!

I have included the above template that you could print out if you want to try and cut it for yourself. It's called a compound cut when you cut on two different faces of a piece of wood. As you can see in the template, there is a line between the two shapes that you line up with the corner of your workpiece when you are gluing it down.

For my project, I wanted to legs to be leaning at a subtle angle, like you see on bar stools and whatnot. So when preparing the blanks, I set the miter gauge to five degrees and tilted the blade of the saw to five degrees. Then I cut four legs of equal size.

I used spray adhesive to attach a template to each of the four legs, then I wrapped them in clear packing tape. If you have a drill press, that's certainly the best way to drill the holes for the interior cuts. If you only have a hand drill, that will work fine, just drill as straight as you can.

As with any scroll saw project, just cut along the line of the template and try and keep the workpiece moving at a steady pace, to reduce saw marks. After your template is cut out on one face, tape it back together and then proceed to cut the other face. Then tape it all back together to make your four interior cuts.

This all sounds really difficult and confusing, but trust me, it's not all that involved. It's relatively easy and very rewarding when you finally take all the tape off and see what's left.

Step 3: Turning Time!

So I started out just trying to get this thing turned round. This proved to be a bit of a project by itself. But with a little persistence, I finally got it there. Then I mounted the blank onto the face plate and turned it a bit more. I tried to keep the turned part of the lamp somewhat simple. Just a subtle taper and that was it. After it was nice and smooth, I added a few coats of shellac.

Finally I used a drill bit to make sure there was a hole all the way through to put the lamp fixture itself through.

Step 4: Finish It Up

With the lamp fixture threaded though my turning, I glued it onto the four scroll sawed pillars. After that had all dried, I put in a bulb, plugged it in and added the lamp shade.

That's all there it to it folks.

I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you have a great day.

Lamps and Lighting Contest 2016

Participated in the
Lamps and Lighting Contest 2016