One of the things repeating to myself (and others), over and over is ... Everything Changes, NOTHING stays the same forever, learn to adapt. This is one of the reasons I am often a bit of a pioneer in working with new technologies. For example, I made a video of using a laser for woodworking way back in March of 2016, 8 years ago when they were still in their infancy for home use, but these machines have skyrocketed in their abilities.
I toured the Frank Lloyd Wright "Allen" house in Wichita in the spring of 2024, and one of the tour guides items of note was a wooden ceiling lampshade in the living room which she described as "having been made with a jigsaw"....
This quite caught my attention because the house was built in 1915, whereas the first "jigsaw" was created in 1947, which all of us who practice woodworking will know, the real tool used for this was likely a "fretsaw" which has been around in various forms for 200 years or more. But that comment triggered me think, could I use these same 1915 ideas to create something more modern, but with a hit of that 1915 idea, and that is what brought about this video ...
Below is the finished lamp
I was not allowed to take pictures inside the house so everything was from memory
The Frank Lloyd Wright "Allen House" Wichita, MO
Blending traditional woodworking tools like the table saw, bandsaw, jointer, planer as well us some woodworking jigs like the veneer cutting jig for the bandsaw, the thin strip ripping jig on the table saw as well as the squaring jig for assembly alignment with of course the Xtool laser for cutting out the precise shape of the lamp panels and using a couple of versions of Starbond CA Glue, all of these pieces came together to make what has turned out to be one of my favorite woodworking pieces. Simple, elegant and timeless (at least to me).
Below are some of the jigs and glue used in production
A word about the Starbond CA Glue, some people were concerned about how strong this glue would be given such a narrow strip of wood it would be glue against, but my testing confirmed this glue was VERY strong and every bit a strong as any other glue I have used, my tests showed that when gluing panels to the pillars, in every test the the wood failed before the glue and in fact was so strong I need pliers to hold the pillars to pry the panel off.
All the raw Red Alder panels were pre-finished with Osmo, a hard-oil wood finish that was first developed as flooring product, it is very resiliant to water, wear and discoloring, easy to apply and looks great, and in this case, pre-finishing seemed to help add some "crsipness" to the laser cutting. I will use this technique more in the future, it works very well. As you saw in the video I sanded the edges of the panel squarely. This was mostly to remove some of the charcoal left from the laser cutting. I wasn't sure if having a thin layer of charcoal between the panel and the pillar would diminish the strenght of the glue, so decided not take a chance and this step took less than 2 minutes and was a good insurance.
I often use Parchment paper on my Squaring Jig so that I don't have to chip off glue from the base, I also have the base and sides of the squaring jig coated with a thin coat of parfin wax, this also helps to prevent glue from sticking, the masking tape sticks very poorly to the parchment paper and to the base of the squaring jig but was just enough to keep the parcment paper from moving around during the process.
Below is the best I could do to show the "dimmed" affect of the Tea Light inside the lamp, it is really quite impressive in real life (the lamp that is .. )
Not a long detailed article this time, a fairly simple build but you still get to use many tradional woodworking tools, and if you have a laser, it's yet another tool that could hold some new ideas. I am going to use mine for more things similar to this
