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Project Information

One aunt had yellowwood. Another aunt had some candle lanterns that she liked which inspired my ones.
A little design input, and a LOT more work than there should have been, and i have ten lanterns.

Materials were all carefully selected from the pile of rough cut lumber if they were anything more than 25 mm thick. - The lesson here kids is not to section a tree too thinly or it might all go to waste.
Very few boards were wide enough for the square tops and bottoms, so some are laminated.
I don't have a thicknesser, and there isn't much quality workmanship in South Africa, so when i got the boards back from the machine shop there was a lot of chip-out and i did a lot of the 'thicknessing' with a hand sander. - The lesson here is to do it yourself from the start cause you're probably going to have to anyway.

The concept, though i'm sure it's obvious, is that the rod protruding at the top is used to lift the inner platter up in the lantern raising the candle through the hole to be lit or for cleaning. The moving platter has it's corners missing so that it indexes on the corners of the pillars and is well located, though this isn't necessary.

The top is held to the pillars with double (to prevent rotation) dowels. The bottom is attached to the pillars with brass wood screws so that the lantern can be partially dismantled in case the glass needs to be replaced, or there's a major wax spill, etc..

The metal candle holder (concave to catch wax dribbles down the candle) has a spike (to support longer candles). And this spike continues below it too, into a hole in the moving platter. This cup / spike candle holder can lift out when a larger candle is used.

The candle actually burns just fine (enough oxygen) if you don't include purposeful air vents. But the first thing anyone says is "won't the candle go out", so to shut them up i added recesses that run under the glass panels' lower edges. In some i chocked the glass up a few millimeters by filling the very lower bit of the 'dado' that the glass runs in, so they can't slide all the way to the base.

One thing missing is the capacity to hang the lanterns.
The contact surface with a table has a felt layer glued on. So they're definately table lanterns.

You can't get away with less well finished surfaces on the inside faces of the pillars because a candle's light shows them up.

I'd prefer to use brass rod with the brassy coloured yellowwood. But i can't source it here. I figure that the stainless works cause the lantern is a combination of the orgainic wood and the shiny, processed glass.

Some have the inset roundover pictured. Some have a simple roundover on the edges.

Gallery

Comments

· Registered
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25 Posts
I like it. Very clean lines. Looks very classy and well constructed. I like the combination of glass and wood. I've never heard of yellowwood something local to South Africa?
 

· Registered
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29 Posts
Very nice candle lantern…. well done
 

· In Loving Memory
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229 Posts
Very nice!!
Keep up the great work!
 

· Registered
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259 Posts
Classy looking candle lantern! Great design and the wood is beautiful. Great job!
 
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