July 18,  2010

The theme of the next carving will be a bonsai. 

The lamp base has been designed with  gently curving sides so that the upper third of the base will reflect most of the light coming from above, and will be carved with the upper leaves of the plant since most light bounces off the upper portion of a plant's canopy.

  The lower 2/3 of the lamp base, where the reflected light is weakest will be where the lower branches, leaves, flowers and trunk will be carved  to mimic the shaded portion of the underside of the canopy.

Appropriate to a bonsai, the foot of the base has been designed as a traditional bonsai pot with a pronounced upper rim, bowl shape and feet.

Wood selection was made at MacBeath Hardwoods in Berkeley.  Cherry is a stable wood that carves well.   They have the finest large-dimension stock , well seasoned, with a low moisture content of  6%.  

Back home the plank was cut into 16" lengths.  The base of the lamp is a laminate of two of these 4" thick pieces that once glued together will be an 8" thick square blank of turning stock.

The woodworking begins by taking the pieces downdown to  a local door manufacturer, Imperial Doorworks, where they were planed flat.

Back home each piece is carefully measured for flatness and adjusted with a hand plane.

So that when placed together the two sides fit tight against each other and show no gaps. 

The shelves contain assortments of 4" thick stock with random widths of from 6 to 10 inches.  The plank I bought was 8" wide and  14+' long and will serve maybe 5 lamps.

The two halves are then glued and clamped together.

The glued blank is then mounted in the lathe and turning can begin.  Here the upper shoulder has been completed and the general shape established.

With the turning blank set aside for now, the  material stock for the shade parts is cut.  A jig on the table saw is used.  This allows for clamping the material tightly so precise cuts can be made.

Here, the rough stock boards just cut, includes from left to right material for the

-rafters,

-posts,

-rings,

-bottom rim

The ring blanks are made up of  5 boards each.  Each board is angle cut, fitted to it's neighbor and glued in the jig to form the beginning pentagon shape of what will become a lantern ring.  Rubber bands are sufficient to pull each joint together.

The glued ring blanks.  These will later be cut into rings for the lantern portion of the shade.  Although these are butt jointed, when  they are mounted together with the posts the overall cage will be strong.

The lower rim of the shade begins construction the same way as the rings, except this large rim will require 8 boards that will be angle cut and butt jointed.  Here is the lower rim glue jig.  

The jig not only functions as a glue support for the ring, but is a clamp down for the final step of gluing two rings together.  The actual total amount of boards used to build this lower rim are 16.  Because it requires two rings of 8 each that, as shown  here, are stacked on the jig and glued together in a laminate, with the butt joints staggered, to make a very strong composite glueup.

The lower rim laminate blank showing the overlap of the butt joints.   Two rings stacked and glued together.   This rim has to be strong because most of the  material shown here will be removed, leaving only a 1/4" thick x 3/8" wide finished rim.

The orignal sketch is done and developed on tracing paper. Then using a light box, transfered to butcher paper.  The thicker butcher paper will serve our needs later as will be shown when it is glued onto the base.

The butcher tracing is placed face down on the base, with the ink next to the wood, and attached with a light coat of water proof glue.

Setting aside the shade construction for the moment, it's time to design the main theme of the carving, the Fuschia Bonsai.

Once the glue has dried, the paper is then wetted down and rubbed off leaving the glued image attached to the turning, clearly visible for carving.

The first step in the carving process is to begin the waste removal of the ground, the area surrounding the carving.  It begins with the gouge doing a rough outlining of  the image and a shallow lowering of all the  ground.

For those of you who have been following this process, and noting the updates, you will perhaps be wondering why it's taken so long to get this far.  The reason is that one cannot always live by lamps alone. I have been in the process of building a deck for a client and should be finished this week and able to devote more time to this lamp. 

The progress on the following lamp has been temporarily put on hold while  I'm working on a commission for a chandelier.  That project should be completed soon and this one resumed.