DIY Maple and Walnut Floor Lamp

Started out needing a lamp after my old one getting destroyed so I looked around for DIY designs and came across this one which matched a lot of my aesthetic preferences. Like the original poster I didn't really care for Ana White's super cheap rendition so I took the basic measurements and layout but modified pretty much everything else, using lap joints for connections and a mortice and tennon for the base attachment and much higher quality woods.

Finished Product:

Here is the original piece by CB2 that the other guides were based on:

Main Body of the Lamp

First step was to draw everything up in CAD. Since I was using lap joints in the beam attachment there are a few differing sizes of the pieces depending on which side of the lamp it's on.

Then cut the 3/4"x3" maple to size (actually 2-1/2" wide). I did this mostly with my miter saw as I hadn't gotten my table saw at this point, things would have been a bit more exact if I had waited 2 weeks for that to show up in my garage but it still worked out. You can see the printed out CAD drawings in the background I crossed off pieces as I completed them.

I also cut the 1/4" walnut though I didn't get any shots of that, it's basically a copy of one side of the maple boards without the side arm going through the vertical beam. 

After that it's just laminating the pieces together... used nearly allll my clamps twice in order to do this

After each glue up I planed everything flat/flush, I need to get better about keeping track of grain as there were a few spots where the two pieces needed to be planed in different directions which isn't really feasible so I had a bit of tear out to deal with.

I didn't care for how Ana-White attached her base (just a pocket screw) so I went with mortice and tenon, it ends up looking cleaner and is much more sturdy... however I'm really bad at taking pictures so I didn't get anything of that process. To make the joint basically just took 1/4" off all around the vertical beam to the depth of the base, Then marked it's profile on the center on the base and used a router to hog out most of the material and used a chisel to clean up the rest. 

Here it is after a couple coats of poly and drilling all the holes for the lamp cord.

A little better image of the color/grain you can see the joint wasn't perfect but after filling it in with a bit of sawdust/glue you can't really see it from a couple feet away.

Lamp Shade

Lamp shade is an idea I stole from here though I used rings from lampshop.com I ordered the 16" for this project and a 14" for a future table lamp total cost of both was 20 dollars shipped which is a hell of a bit better than the kit which is 15 plus shipping just for one similar kits on Amazon were about that price too. The shop is a bit out dated and they actually had to e-mail me for an actual shipping cost but hey saved 10 bucks and wasn't in a huge hurry so I didn't mind.

The veneer I used was flexible veneer with a backing, though I would have prefered un-backed veneer so the light would shine through this was all my wood shop had on hand I'm sure you could find a source for unbacked online. The linked guide probably has better pictures than I could take while doing this myself but here are a few process pics:

Cutting to the right size, a 16" diameter shade has a perimeter of 50-1/4" inches so I cut it to a shade over 51 in length and then did the long cut of 12" for the width. I just used a sharp box cutter for this:

Since the roll was in the wrong direction I slowly rolled it up the right way a bit tighter than I needed and let it sit over night used some painter's tape to keep it in place

After everything wanted to bend the right way I temporarily taped the rings in position and CA glued the seam, it was a bit sloppy and I should have been a bit less liberal with the glue but thankfully with a light sanding and finish application the glue is hardly noticeable... plus it's on the back side of the lamp

After that glue in the ring by applying a bead of CA glue all around the edge of the rings let it dry and apply a coat of danish oil

Here is the glue mess up after application of the oil

not great but not as noticeable as it was before. When installed and not under a bright shop light it is even less obvious. There was a 1/16" or so error in the width top/bottom so I just trimmed that up with a sharp chisel to even it out.

Wiring

Originally I was going to use a "swag light kit" from Lowe's but the cord ended up only being 9' long which was about 3-4 foot short so I wired up some sockets I had laying around in a scrap piece of wood with some "antique" style lamp cord I had salvaged the foot dimmer from my old floor lamp so I put that in-line after running the wires through the main body of the lamp.

Here is my makeshift swag light

Wires go through the top through a hole just big enough for both (~1/4") then I drilled the face at the same mark to make a sort of T channel, the face hole is slightly smaller and it was a pretty tight fit but does a good job of keeping things suspended without putting stress on the electrical connections. I didn't have any wire nuts on hand and soldering a 3-way splice is a pain so I just used some euro style barrier strips that I had on hand from my speaker building days. I doubt this would meet any sort of code requirements but it works. If you're uncomfortable with electrical I'd suggest getting a swag light kit pre-wired but with the length of cord you actually need.

Here is a quick sketch of the piece of wood, no idea if that make it clearer:

Finished Product

Below are a few finished shots of the lamp

Here you can see a bit of the "glow" you get through the veneer, if this was unbacked veneer I think you'd get a bit more of this at all light levels which would be nice.