Sometimes when you do wood working projects, you end up with some left over pieces of wood that are not usable for anything, but you don’t want to get rid of them just in case. This is the genesis of my scrap wood lamp project. In this case I had a number of circle cutouts created when I used my 3 1/2″ circle saw. All the same size, and in a few different types of wood and thicknesses. Each with a hole directly in the middle. One day I stacked them up and an idea hit me. Can I turn them into a lamp base?
So I glued a few together using a 1/4″ dowel rod in the middle to line them up and keep the center holes lined up and pulled it out as the glue dried. I did this with the intention that at some point I would push a power cord up through it. When I was done it looked okay but not perfect, and then I used a hand sander to remove the over glue, and it looked pretty nice as the grain started to show up. At that point I decided I would move forward with it, and then realized I hadn’t taken a single photo until after it was fully sanded. Also you can see a few oak remnants that were left over from my computer lamp build.
A quick stacking of the pieces didn’t look too bad, and I decided to add one more piece to top it all off, and then I figured it was worth my time to buy a lamp hardware kit from Menard’s and go ahead and glue everything together. Since I wanted to make sure that I was able to disassemble this in case I ever needed to repair a cord or replace the lampshade mount, and opted to used screws to fasten the pieces and not glue.
Assembling it like that also meant that the hardware was in place before I started to apply finish, but that was noting a little masking tape couldn’t fix. Ended up using four coats of spray on polyurethane with a little little sanding between the last two coats and then it was time to put it all together.
What I ended up with was a lamp that looked like it came off a lathe, although it never was turned, and a few less items in my scrap pile. I randomly picked a cork lampshade because it was available, and it was a somewhat similar tone of the lamp itself.
The outcome was an amazing crackle effect when the lamp was turned on. Glad I didn’t pick up a plain white one line I originally planned. Not too shabby for a couple of hours work over three days. Most of the time was spent waiting for the glue and finish to dry.
