Cocobolo FLW Lamp WIP

[Clark Harbaugh]

I ran across Jesse Schauer's post about his Frank Lloyd Wright lamp and thought that would be a great use of a piece of cocobolo that was given to me a little over a year ago. It was nice to actually get back to some woodworking after taking a year off to deal with life. One week later, and here are the results.

Here are a couple of pics of the parts after they had been cut.
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From this one, you can see that I drilled a hole up the lenght to facilitate the wiring. I used an 18" long 3/4" paddle bit on my cordless drill - nerve racking to say the least. At one point I came within less than 1/16" from popping out the side.
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To glue up the shades, I laid a piece of tape down on the bench. I then placed the three pieces on the tape and used a block that was the same size as the inside diminsion to 'fold' the pieces around and then clamped. I covered the blocks with wax paper to make sure they didn't get glued to the shades. This worked out magnificantly and yeilded some of the best miters I have ever made.
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Here you can see that I have pulled a lenght of lamp chord up the lenght and pulled a loop out of each hole.
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At each connection, I stripped back the cable, soldered the wires together, and then wrapped with heat shrink.
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Testing the electrical...

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Conitinued in next post....

[Clark Harbaugh]

Here is the first dry fit.
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And here is the final product. This was actually the first time for me to work with cocobolo (outside of a few pens). One key word of advice if you haven't worked with it before - wear a dust mask. I don't usually react to wood, but this gave me a soar throat and a cough. Popped one of the wife's alergy pills and I was fine.
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[Bruce Page]

Unusual and cool!

[Tony Shea]

Very nice work with that coco. Stuff can be a pain in the lungs to work. It's actually a known irritant to the lungs.

THe project is indeed different and cool. I like the light it produces.

Do you think the hole you drilled all the way through could have been smaller? Also, what gauge wire is that? It looks large as well for lamp wire. I ask because I think a smaller hole and smaller wire would have been a little less nerve racking when drilling all the way through. Anyways, very nice work!

[Clark Harbaugh]

Tony, good eye. I just used what chord I had laying around. All I had was 16AWG handy, which is overkill. The 3/4" hole gave me enough room to loop the cable out each hole and then pull back in after soldering. A smaller hole would probably work with 18AW.