Making a Shoji Paper Lamp

My house has a living room that's very dark. The house was built in the 90s when designers and builders decided that it just wasn't fashionable to have lights built into rooms anymore. So I decided to make a shoji paper lamp to make a little more ambient lighting in the room. I started by milling up some scrap white oak. This was very much a make it up as I went along kind of project. At this point I didn't know that I was just going to end up painting the lamp. If had I probably would have used a different type of wood. Before getting started I had also thought I'd make this entire lamp with nothing but hand tools, but then I got lazy. I used half lap joints for the side panels of the lamp. I cut these on the table saw. I was actually able to get surprisingly tight joints. After some sanding I glued the panels together. I did this in steps. Then I glued three of the panels together to form a cage. With that glue drying I turned my attention to the top. I know it looks like I'm missing the line with every cut, but due to the angle of the blade those are actually showing where the cut is on the bottom of the piece. This was the first time I ever tried to make something quite like this and getting the angles right was very difficult. They didn't come out perfect but for what I was making it worked out all right. Because the tube that's going to hold the lamp needed to enter through the top I chopped the top of the pyramid off so I could create a flat surface. I then made a little finial to cap the top of the lamp. I put a small chamfer on the bottom of the base. I added alignment pins to help with the eventual attachment of the rest of the lamp to the base. I just cut up some brass nails to make the pins themselves. And you just can't make anything without adding a little blood. That's what I get for using wire nails as alignment pins. But because the nails were sharp I was able to transfer the alignment pattern to the cage pretty easily. I knocked up a top for the cage out of a little bit of scrap plywood. At this point I still had this idea that the fourth side of the lamp cage would swing open like a door. I was using little pins as hinges and the idea was to be able to swing this door open to change the light bulb if it ever needed it. But I didn't yet realize that this just wasn't going to work. I never took into account the sloping overhang of the lamp top. This is what I get for making it up as I go along. So I rethought the problem and decided I could have this panel swing upward with the hinge at top. This worked out okay. After drilling a hole for the wire I attached the top. I also added a little stop so the door wouldn't swing too far in. Since this lamp was wall mounted I needed a way to be able to attach it to the wall. After cutting a dado which will eventually hold a piece of pipe, I scalloped the corners. I also routed a little cove around the edge. I bent some half inch diameter steel tubing on my homemade pipe bender. I made a little stop bushing off camera. This I attached to the pipe. The reason is so it wouldn't slide down through the bracket on the wall. It was kind of a shame to paint this but I was going for a really dark look and I didn't want to try and do it with stain and varnish. I also had a full can of dark hammer textured paint from a previous project that I wanted to use up. I designed and 3d printed a little bracket to hold the light socket. I used some epoxy to glue this standard light bulb socket into the bracket. Once the paint dried I cut out and glued in the shoji paper. This particular shoji paper was a lot thinner than I would have liked. If I did this again I probably wouldn't use this kind of paper. I used a dry iron to get the roll out. Also modge podge turned out to not be the best glue I could have used. Next time something that isn't water based. The moisture from the glue caused the paper to wrinkle a little bit more than I would have liked. Next I used some epoxy to glue in the tube. I cannibalized a light duty extension cord for my wiring. This will only ever have a 5 watt led bulb in it so the heat generation and load draw are very low. The fixture I used is the type that uses little spikes to pierce the insulation of the wire. Being sure to cut the hot wire I wired in the switch. I would have preferred to use a black or dark colored wire and switch but this is what I had on hand. And of course a quick ops check. I then used more epoxy to glue on the base. Lastly I attached the door. Again because of the sloping overhang of the top I had to have the pins go from the inside. This was a little tricky but it worked out fine. And with that done the bulb went back in. Overall I'm pretty happy with how this little lamp came out. It was a different and fun small project and I love how it looks in our living room. As always thanks for watching.