translucent woods

[Kevin Jenness]

I am thinking of turning some wooden lampshades. Some years ago I saw a demonstration by a New Hampshire turner named Peter Bloch who uses aspen, or as we call it here popple, for its superior light transmission. Are there other species with similar translucency that would turn well?

[Kyle Iwamoto]

Norfolk Island Pine.
I posted a pic a long time ago. Search for: I turned a lampshade. No, really. I searched, but it's on page 3 or so.
Google Ron Kent. He pretty much pioneered NIP and making translucent items. Sadly he recently passed away.

[Brice Rogers]

At a wood turning meeting we had a presenter from Hawaii. IIRC, he turned "green" and then spent weeks applying oil (walnut oil?) to the outside. On the inside he would put paper towels that would pull out moisture. Every day he would spend a few minutes to rub in some more oil. After a few weeks, the piece has a translucence. I think that it is similar to what happens to a piece of paper when it gets oil on it.

[Dave Mount]

I've done translucent candle holders out of paper birch turned thin and soaked to complete saturation with danish oil.

We usually talk about open and closed grain woods in terms of whether the earlywood is porous (e.g., as in oak or ash) versus say maple. However, in terms of oil absorption, closed grain woods like aspen, paper birch, and maple vary substantially in terms of how "open" the latewood is to absorbing oil. Based on observation, I'd rate those three woods in that order, aspen highest and maple lowest. That happens to be the reverse order of their dry density, which may connect to that. Note that I'm talking about paper birch, which is considerably less dense than yellow birch (which is what most generic "birch" sold commercially is).

Best,

Dave

[Paul Williams]

I have only turned one lamp shade. It was green wood from a large spruce tree. Relatively small, desk lamp size. I turned it very thin and then kept it wet with multiple coats of linseed oil. I wouldn't call it translucent, but it really glows neat with the light inside the shade.