Project Information
This project was the convergence of a couple of different circumstances. It started when I posted my Carved Hummingbird Box to Facebook and my sister-in-law commented that she also loved hummingbirds, hint, hint. So I had it in mind to do something hummingbird-related for her. Then my son took a sudden interest in building a couple of lamps for his room. I had recently seen a posting about Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater Lamp, and suggested he build something along those lines. That didn't interest him, but I liked the design enough to build one myself, and I thought the modern design would appeal to my sister-in-law. Rather than carve a hummingbird onto the outside of the lamp, I got the idea to carve the hummingbird into the inside of the lamp so that it would only be revealed when the lamp was switched on. A quick experiment suggested it was probably workable, so I just jumped into the build.
The lamp shade is poplar over an African mahogany base. (The mahogany was left over from my Adirondack Chair project.) Unlike the Wright lamp, the shade has three sides and does not swivel. The design is intentionally tall, but I'm not entirely happy with the base to shade proportions. The hummingbird design was routed out using a Dremel, small spiral bits and a router base. The pattern is cut to different depths to create different shades in the revealed figure. There is a white lucite square inserted into slots at the top of the shade to mute the light shining upwards. The lamp is finished with several coats of a water-based poly.
The construction should be obvious. The only interestingly tricky bit was in making the long miters for the shade. Except for the routed hummingbird, everything was done with hand tools and I didn't really have a good approach for making a long consistent miter. I found plans for a jig at the Unplugged Woodshop but between saving the link and getting ready to build the jig the website disappeared! (It's back now.) So I made the jig pretty much from memory after one quick look at the website, but it turned out fairly well. I rough-cut the miters with a hand saw and then used the jig to clean them up. They pulled together tightly on the outside corners on the glue up, so I was happy. My only regret is not making the stops the full length of the jig. I'll probably fix that before I use the jig again.
Looking at the lamp in a dark room suggest to me that a "magic" nightlight along the same lines could be a good design.
The lamp shade is poplar over an African mahogany base. (The mahogany was left over from my Adirondack Chair project.) Unlike the Wright lamp, the shade has three sides and does not swivel. The design is intentionally tall, but I'm not entirely happy with the base to shade proportions. The hummingbird design was routed out using a Dremel, small spiral bits and a router base. The pattern is cut to different depths to create different shades in the revealed figure. There is a white lucite square inserted into slots at the top of the shade to mute the light shining upwards. The lamp is finished with several coats of a water-based poly.
The construction should be obvious. The only interestingly tricky bit was in making the long miters for the shade. Except for the routed hummingbird, everything was done with hand tools and I didn't really have a good approach for making a long consistent miter. I found plans for a jig at the Unplugged Woodshop but between saving the link and getting ready to build the jig the website disappeared! (It's back now.) So I made the jig pretty much from memory after one quick look at the website, but it turned out fairly well. I rough-cut the miters with a hand saw and then used the jig to clean them up. They pulled together tightly on the outside corners on the glue up, so I was happy. My only regret is not making the stops the full length of the jig. I'll probably fix that before I use the jig again.
Looking at the lamp in a dark room suggest to me that a "magic" nightlight along the same lines could be a good design.