New woodworking idea?

Has anyone seen or heard of lamp/ceiling light shades being made from wood? I'm thinking it should be relatively simple to make shades from veneer-thickness woods which would provide interesting contrasts/ compliments to existing room decors. I'm going to have to do some opacity testing on veneers to see if there is any translucency through different woods. Or whether, in fact, that even matters very much. Probably shouldn't be that difficult to get frames & fixings either.

I'd appreciate any thoughts anyone might have.

FoggyTown Most of my projects' best features began as mistakes!

Reply to
FoggyTown
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Been done, already... :)

I don't have a link handy, but there was a FWW article years ago and several other places I've seen them as well.

One that I liked that I recall from the old FWW article used red oak sliced then across grain (end grain showing) so the open porosity was utilized...

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Reply to
dpb

Haven't tried that, but here's a Humvee made out of balsa

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Reply to
HeyBub

I'm thinking about turning some pendant shades for lighting over a pool table. Probably segmented turnings. Not so much worried about the opacity, but the fire-rating. These won't be UL listed. Tom

Reply to
tom

... and here's some motorbikes made from wood too.

But seriously, go to google images and search for "Wooden lampshade". Theres a few. It wall all the rage in the 70's over here, so some are pretty dated, but looking at the images some are very cool and modern.

Let us know how you get on.

Digga

Reply to
barry

Check out this guy's work:

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Reply to
Bill

oooooooooooooooooooo! I like!

Reply to
FoggyTown

If you have a "rustic" decorating theme, you might want to check out two different lamp shades & lamps that I made from a tree that a beaver cut down in my yard a few years back.

Scroll about half way down page after clicking on this link to see some pictures of my beaver lamps.

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You can click on the picture to see a slightly larger version.

For the willow lamp shade, I peeled the bark off of some willow branches, used the band saw to saw them in half so one side is flat lengthwise, and attached them to a wooden circle I cut from a regular piece of pine. I used brads to attach the willow to the wooden circle, then used jute rope for decoration. It makes an interesting shadow effect when the light is turned on. I suppose you wouldn't even have to saw them in half. You could also line the inside of the shade with parchment paper for extra filtering.

The second example of a rustic lamp shade was made from a birch "tube". After a birch tree falls to the ground and lays there for a while, the wood inside decays, but the bark doesn't. This shade also makes interesting light shadows because of the natural holes and other imperfections of the bark, especially if you put a colored light bulb in it for an accent lamp. I had to bend some wire to attach the bark for both the top and bottom rims, and using jute rope, "sewed" the bark tube onto the wire. I also bent some wire to make the part that holds the shade directly onto the light bulb. If you need any birch "tubes", let me know because I have a bunch out back on the pile, all different sizes.

Both of these lamps were made from the same log that the beaver chopped down. I just bought the electrical parts and drilled through the log, finished it, and glued some felt on the bottom.

Reply to
Sandy

get some of the self adhesive hardwood veneer and use clear acrylic for the structure (strength) and wire lampshade parts etc.

P.S. you can use your scroll saw to do piercing designs on the laminated acrylic/veneer parts.

Reply to
Bob

Maybe a year or so ago, DIY network had a "I did it myself" show of interviews with different artists. One of them was a guy who turned lampshades out of wood. Haven't seen it for a year or two but if I recall correctly he used oak. He and his wife hefted a huge chunk onto a huge lathe and he turned it into a paper-thin lampshade. Made mountains of tailings. Towards the end he had a little lightbulb on a holder that he mounted inside the piece so he could see how translucent it was getting.

Nice work, but man. Looked like he turned a hundred pounds or more of wood into a half pound lampshade.

I liked that show.

Reply to
else24

Peter Bloch?

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Reply to
DJ Delorie

that's the right size chunk and there's that little lightbulb inside it, and the lampshades look like the ones I remember. The only thing I forgot was he likes popple, not oak. And it's 200 pounds of woodchunk turned into a few ounces of lampshade. :-)

Reply to
else24

Seems like an awful waste of wood. Like felling a whole tree to get one plank. I'd feel guilty if I did anything like he does - especially with hard wood.

FoggyTown Most of my projects' best features began as mistakes!

Reply to
FoggyTown

FoggyTown wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com:

Seems like we look at things from what is scarce to us. In many areas, wood is a waste product, and gets chipped up and composted, burned for fuel, used as path covers and mulch, all sorts of things. What gets turned into bowls and lampshades usually can't be used for much beyond firewood.

There's a spot in the Oakland, CA hills where the city and park district dumps wood they've needed to trim and cut, and folks are encouraged to come by and pick out what they need, for free. There's quite a pile of 'future bowls' in my yard right now, waiting for the lathe.

London may differ significantly.

Enjoy your art!

Patriarch

Reply to
Patriarch

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