All the leaves are gone.

The Chickadee Light Box was my third stained glass project and my first attempt at a lamp. It turned out better than I could have imagined. I love to turn on the light and just sit in the room with it glowing in the corner. (Maybe that's a little weird, I admit. But the soft light is peaceful.) The chickadees happily guard the entry of my house.

I've basked in the glory of my first successful lamp long enough. I figure that it's time to get on with the next one. I had the idea for a fall leaves lamp at the same time as the chickadees design. (Again, thank you to Ichiro Tashiro for his inspiring work.) So last fall, I wandered around my yard and took some snapshots of my maple trees.



I first thought a "realistic" leaf was the way to go. But as I studied the outlines of "real" leaves, I thought better of it real quick. There are a lot of curves and overlapping parts. I know my limitations. My stained glass experience was not up to the task of creating 6-8 realistic leaves. Especially when I'm building a complicated three-dimensional lamp.

Instead, I traced the outline of a leaf photo that I liked and made a posterboard cut-out of it. I actually made three identical cut-outs.

Once I drew the borders of the lamp panel (6" x 9") I played around with the placement of the leaves. When I was happy, I traced around the leaf cutouts and moved on to the next panel of the lamp. All the while I'm thinking about how the glass will cut and grind. I could easily design myself into a corner, making pieces that would be very difficult to reproduce.

As you can see, the first panel is completed. I'm taking cues from panel #1 to design panel #2. These panels will make one corner of the lamp. On the fly, I decided to take curves out of the design. Instead, I've gone over the leaf tracings with a ruler to straighten every curve.

Now all four panels are designed and labeled. I will photocopy them for safekeeping. My next step is to transfer each panel design to poster board. I will then number and cut out all the pieces using my foiling shears.

I figured wood would work.

This is a chunk of figured Western Walnut. Eventually, it will be the base for the lamp.I picked this up from the scrap bin of a local gun stock blank sawyer.
In its raw form, it is about 30" long x 3" high x 2.5" wide. I need to make a box that is 6" wide x 6" high x 3/4" thick. So I'm going to resaw this board and glue it together to make a bookmatch.



I used my table saw to cut it apart. You can see the burn marks from the blade. I would rather have used a bandsaw for this operation. The bandsaw would have made a cleaner cut and its thin blade would not have wasted so much material. Unfortunately, I do not have a bandsaw.
After I scraped away the dried glue I ran the board through my thickness planer until it was the proper thickness. I am going for a thickness of 3/4".



I need a useable 24" of length that is at least 6" wide. This board barely gave those dimensions to me. Close enough! Here you can see the figure of the walnut. This is raw wood. When I add the finish, the figure should really POP!



I have now cut the board down to its final dimensions and cut the miters. Each board is 6" long, but only 5" high. I cut off some extra height in order to made the colors and figure of the board look more balanced. Next, I will cut grooves into the inside face of the boards. One groove will hold a plywood bottom. The other groove will hold the lamp.



Here is the plywood bottom. It is 3/4" baltic birch plywood. Now, you may be asking me, "Isn't 3/4" plywood a bit thick for a simple project like a lamp?". To that I would say, "Yes". But do you see that hole in the middle of the board? That is the hole that holds the lamp socket. For the lamp socket to properly seat and then stay put, a thick board is necessary. I did cut a rabbet around the edges of the plywood so that I could keep the groove in the walnut base to a minimum. The groove is 1/4" wide and 1/4" deep.



Here you can see all of the grooves and the plywood bottom ready for glue-up. I've already sanded each piece with 150 and 220 grit sandpaper.



Gluing up a mitered box is easier to do with masking tape than regular wood clamps. Here you can look into the top of the box where the groove will hold the brass base of the lamp. The groove is 1/4" wide and approx. 1-1/2" deep.



OOPS! I decided that the wood base needed "feet". So I set up my router table and proceeded to remove the wood I no longer wanted. My mistake was feeding the wood into the router bit to aggressively. I ended up splintering the wood on two of the feet. Of course, the splinters (they were chunks!) were long gone when I realized what I had done. So there was no hope of just gluing the broken pieces back in place. The pieces that broke off left a void that was approx. 1/4" wide x 1/4" long x 1/16" deep. I had to fill the void with something.
A crusty old woodworker friend of mine taught me this trick. First, get some fine sawdust from a scrap of the project (walnut in this case). My random-orbit sander had some in the dust catcher. Pile up a small mound of saw dust and add cyanoacrylate glue (super-glue) and mix together until it forms a paste. Your going for the consistency of peanut butter. But don't sweat it too much, just make sure you can spread it. Get a scrap of wood and spread the brown mixture directly into the void. Make sure to use more than you need. And don't worry about perfect application. You will be able to sand away the excess after it dries.



A splotchy looking repair. Ready for final sanding!



Here is the box right after the first coat of Danish oil. I started with medium walnut color to hopefully bring out the figured grain. (I think it looks pretty sharp right now!) Later coats were tung oil. After it was completely dry, I gave it a final sanding with 600 grit wet-dry paper and rubbed on a coat of furniture wax.



And here it is! This was a really challenging project! But the result was worth it and I can't wait to start my next version of this fantastic lamp.