Lamp turning

Sorry to hear of your tribulations.

Normal woodworkers do a lot of planning, drawing, measuring... Turners do a whole lot less (or none) of those things. For many turning projects just charging ahead without much preparation works. For other turning projects -- lamps for example -- it doesn't. You need to see ahead to what the problems will be -- getting a hole down the center for the hardware and wire, attaching the base and hardware, etc. Additionally, we need to determine how we are going to hold the work to the lathe -- none of these are trivial.

It would seem that a good place to start would be the library -- likely there is at least one book with a plan for a lamp. I have an old book of turning projects written years ago by somebody's shop teacher. The suggested turning tools and methods (scraping mainly) would make you cringe but there is still much to be learned from the book although you would never be tempted to make even one of the included projects.

Another useful thing to do is to sit down with pencil and paper, draw something which is close to the desired shape and see where the glue joints and figure are going to end up. Anyway, this would be a start.

Bill

Maybe the following link can help you identify what was missing from your effort. Andy has an entire section of his site devoted to his process and techniques, and the finished lamps are inspirational enough to warrant a visit by themselves.

Michael Latcha - at home in Redford, MI

fyi: Actually, what you wanted to turn was a 'lamp stand,' 'light,' or 'light fixture.' A lamp is the portion that illuminates, sometimes called an electric bulb. Dan

OK. Here are a few thoughts for you:

1- if I understand you correctly, you laminated the blank up from boards. How long did you leave them clamped up? The way I understand it you did the whole job in one evening. I would be leaving the blank clamped overnight.

2- could the plugs you used have acted like wedges to open up the glue lines.

3- you only see birdseyes on the flat sawn surfaces of the board. It really doesn't make good material for spindle turning. The birdseyes are formed as little tubes growing radially in the tree. If you make a radial cut in a log, all you will see is the sides of these tubes.

4- with a few exceptions, notably some very well though out segmented bowls, laminating blanks leads to finished products that have little aesthetic appeal, to me at any rate.

Derek

Prometheus wrote:

Thanks for the illuminating info, Dan. I wonder how many of us scurried to the dictionary hoping to refute you, but failed. Best I can do is suggest that he might be asking about turning an "electric bulb".

Happy New Year. ... or should that correctly be 'Next Year'? ;)

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

LOL! I get corrected everytime I got to the industrial supply house to by Metal Halide 'lamps' for the 'lights' at work. :)

Just curious - How long was it between glue up and mounting in the lathe? I know th bottles say cured in X (hour, 2 hours, etc.). When I mount an object in the lathe, especially with a fair amout of face-gluing, I like for it to sit on the bench for at least a day. I may be wrong, but it seems like a larger face-glued surface might take longer to set.

At least it makes me feel better.

I make furniture and now I only use exterior glue. Where structural strength is required I use mechanical devices, dowels or biscuits with Gorilla glue or epoxy. I agreed with leaving the pressure on for a minimum of 24 hours in ambient temperature. For routine work I have had success with leaving the clamps on for only 2-4 hours when the temperature is dry and above 70F/20C Again this is subject to the type of wood and its oil, sap and humidity content. If the lumber come from Home Depot (or similar sources) where it was probably kiln dried and store either outside or into unheated warehouse the situation is different. The best success I had was with air dried lumber. After the wood is dried Its stored indoor at ambient temperature. Then when Its need it, the wood is rough cut, glued and finished as required. Still at that I have about

1/16 - 3/16" expansion taking place every summer when its very humid and winter when the indoor heat is dry.

Two hours- Coming from a more furniture-based approach to things where

30 minutes is usually long enough to get back to work, I figured that would be long enough. Of course, then I tried this with another blank, and I had exactly the same problem- must have jumped the gun with the cure time. My previous laminated blanks were mahogany that set for weeks, not hours.

No, they were cut from the same board, and set perfectly flush.

On the bright side, I went back to work on the piece yesterday, and turned the thing down to a much thinner diameter, taking the two outside pieces of the laminated blank right off with the roughing gouge, and the finished product has some bird's eye again. It's thinner than I would have liked, but it turned out all right after all. In the future, I'll be saving the bird's eye for other things (Though I have decided I'm a big fan of the way Maple in general finishes up)

It's pretty hit or miss, that's for sure- but when it works out, they can be very striking. For now, I'm mainly focusing on chisel technique and finishing, so it works out ok for my purposes. Of course I'd love to have big hunks of burl to work on, but that's down the road a ways- it's unlikely I'll be able to find anything until the spring storms hit, and some trees start coming down.

Aut inveniam viam aut faciam

No Home Depot here! The only place worth going to in my area is a hardwood supplier that kiln dries and then stores the lumber in racks indoors. Unfortunately, they don't have much thick stock- the thickest I've found there is 9/4 cherry and basswood.

I'll be moving into my new house soon (hopefully!), so I'll have space to start air-drying my own, but for the time being I'm stuck with what I can buy and use right away.

Thanks to all who responded! Aut inveniam viam aut faciam