tips on making veneer lampshades?

Oil improves light transmission, but suffers from problems with age yellowing. Try mineral oil, but I'd probably use beeswax instead.

Flammability isn't a problem, but prolonged heating will discolour it. Make a prototype, check you have enough ventilation, and measure the surface temperature.

There was an article (FWW ?) on turned lampshades a while back. Some guy was taking huge logs and turning them right down to veneer thickenesses.

On Sat, 12 Jul 2003 02:02:33 +0100, Andy Dingley Crawled out of the shop and said. . .:

i saw that guy doing his thing on DIY's "i did it myself" thing between shows...awsome lookin, but i wonder about splitting and the like myself.

Traves

I found the page on him at DIY though and they *are* pretty...

but it seems kind of wasteful to me. Says he was using New England Aspen. Although I think I'm going for something different than he is. I like the redwood burl not for the light transmission, but I think of it as kind of like a tiffany-lamp style shade. You're not going to light a room with it very well, but the color is simply tremendous! But turning a block of redwood burl into veneer-thin wood? not likely...

david

You could always use a thin parting tool, and turn out *multiple* venner-thin shades, kind of like the fellows that get multiple, stackable bowls from the same block.

steve