The light is hanging out

This is just a quick post to show you that I actually got the kitchen light hung.  For those familiar with these lights, you know there is a cheap aluminum fixture from which the light hangs andthis is bolted to the light box in the ceiling.

All I did was use brace and bit to cut a 1 1/2″ hole in the middle of the plate and then a couple of 1/2″ holes that were 3 1/2″ apart (distance between the mounting holes in the socket.  I mounted the fixture to the oak plate with longer than normal screws loose and protruding out the back.

Then, while balancing the lamp plate, the light, a small flashlight in my mouth, and a screwdriver, I managed to get it installed as you see above.  The process looked very much like a tryout for a circus balancing act but a few well-chosen words to help my concentration, tongue in the corner of my mouth for balance, and more than a little luck, it worked out.  Best of all, Chantal, likes it.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Making the tracklight base: Pt2

Continuing the project started with Making the tracklight base: Pt1, I began work on the edge moldings.  The first step was to cut the rabbets.  I did this by first mking 3/4″ deep and 1/4″ in from the edge of the walnut pieces.

This left me with a rabbet and some long strips of walnut that are just under 1/4″ thick.  Wonderful fodder for a future miniatures project (grin).

Unfortunately, I don’t own many molding planes and in this case I wanted an Astragal-like edging.  I had to resort to a router for this function.  I suppose one cannot deny that using a router on wood can be referred to as creating things with wood but in my opinion it is not “woodworking” any more than a toothpick factory is woodworking.  Routing with a bit spinning 25 thousand rpm, is a brutal, process that I won’t promote with photographs of the process.  I long for the day when I can own molding planes to allow me to do this process without the expense, noise and brutality of a router.  And so here we skip ahead a bit to what I managed with the router.

I found that I had to maintain a flat on to of this process as I had to pass the stock through the router on each side while retaining a flat surface in contact with the table.  This flat, however, was easily removed using a block plane.  I was back to enjoying the project at this step.

With that accomplished, and a bit of rough sanding, the cross-sections on the moldings was finished and I was ready to cut miters.  Those were cut and then test fit on the bench.

It was time to heat up the glue pot and so I did.  A few clamps, some hide glue and a bit of time and the frame was glued together.

I glued the center plate into place, being careful to glue it only on the ends.  In this way, the oak would be free to expand/contract across the grain.  This approach would be less than optimal for a trampoline but as this piece will be hanging from the ceiling, with the panel weight resting in the rabbets, I think it will be fine.

I applied a couple coats of oil, let it dry, and then applied a couple coats of General Finishes Armo-R-Seal, which is an oil-based, wipe-on polyurethane that I really like when I turn to a polyurethane.  I’ll need to drill a couple holes for mounting and to get the lighting wires through it but otherwise the base is ready for installation.

Making the tracklight base: Pt1

Recently I presented SketchUp drawings of a kitchen tracklight and my idea of what a wood base for it would look like if I built one.   A couple people have asked for the drawing so they could see how I did it.  You can grab them here if you’re interested.

This weekend was really hectic and I needed some relax time so I headed to the shop to abuse some wood.  One of my favorite things to do is to use a hand plane to plane wood.  I really don’t know what it is about it but the sound and feel of a plane taking shavings off hardwood is my mantra….ah..uuuuhmmmmm.

To make the lamp plate that I drew requires an oak central panel with a walnut border.  I didn’t have much oak but found one board that was a bit less than 4″ wide.  I cut it into three pieces and started flattening the surfaces and edges to form a panel.  The three boards shown above were the result.

I glued up the three panels, forgetting to photograph the process (grin).  The result required a bit of flattening and my #7 jointer plane made quick work of that.

I went over it with a scraper to create the slick, shiny surface that only a scraper can provide and declared the central portion of the lamp plate finished.   Then I let my Woodworker II and some electrons cut the panel to size.

I took a 28″ long piece of walnut from my stash and flattened both sides of it, removing a bit of twist that was in the board.  As this was a fairly thick board, I still ended up with a board that was nearly 1″ thick.  This is one of the many benefits for working with rough-cut lumber rather than buying your wood at the Borg.

Then I flattened one edge, cut a 1 1/2″ slice off the board, flattened those edges and then cut another.  The result was these three boards.

The last step for the night was to cut one of these pieces in half.  These will serve as the shorter, end pieces of the framing.  So, the plate is now in this state.

Next step will be to cut the rabbets and do something about adding some ‘style’ to the edging and finally miter the corners.  Tune in next time (grin).

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Making a track light pot in SketchUp

Ok..ok…I give.  I once said that I wouldn’t do SketchUp tutorials since there are so many great videos available.  I wish I had a camcorder as I’d be less reluctant to do them.   But I’ve had a lot of people respond to the SketchUp graphic of my kitchen track light

and everyone of those emails asked “How do you make the light?” and some suggested that they thought SketchUp was only good for doing “straight” things.

Clearly this is not the case and so I thought that I’d provide a short discussion of two methods to generate the light pot, which is little more than a hollow cone with a column on top of it.  These methods can be used to create many different shapes.  I’m going to assume you know the dimensions of your light and can translate them to SketchUp lines and shapes.

Method 1: Using the FollowMe Tool

Start by drawing a circle (diameter unimportant) and a rectangle from the center of the circle.  Dimension the rectangle to be the radius and height of your lamp pot.

Next step is to draw, on the rectangle, half the cross-section of the lamp.I’m not sure you can see it as the thickness of my lamp is only 1/32″ but that outline is a set of parallel lines (representing inside and outside surfaces of the lamp pot), and connected at the ends.  This generates a “surface”, not a line, and that is important to the technique.  Notice also that once I’ve drawn this section, I delete the rest of the rectangle.

The rest is simple and downright magical.  You simply select the circle and then choose the FollowMe tool.  With that tool, click on your cross-section surface and you’ll create this:

Not as tough as you thought, is it?  Notice that the form we created is not only hollow as we’d like but there is a thickness modeled.  Time to draw a light bulb (grin).

Method 2: Using the Move tool

With the previous method we generated a form that has a thickness (in my case it was 1/32″) that represents the actual material of the part.  Often, though, you don’t care about this and are more interested in just modeling the surface.  You can use the Move tool to create the lamp pot and the only difference you’ll see is the lack of thickness.

Draw 2 circles, one inside the other.  The outside circle is the diameter of the opening of your light and the inside one is the diameter of the cylinder on top.

Then comes the magic of the Move tool.  Select the inner circle outline.  Then click on the Move tool.  Position the cursor on the circle outline and then, holding the Alt-key down pull upward to whatever the height of your lamp cone is.  You’ll see that the Move tool does what SketchUp calls “AutoFold” and it moves the inner circle up while keeping it connected to the surface between the two circles.  Just like magic, this creates a cone of the proper height and angle.

Then all you have to do is use the Push/Pull tool on the top surface, pulling a cylinder up the height of your lamp cylinder.

If you look at the inside of this lamp you’ll see it looks pretty much like the first one except that there is no thickness to the wall of the lamp.

That’s all there is to it?  Simple, isn’t it?  For instance, draw a simple outline like  use the FollowMe tool (and add a bit of color) and you get this:

Thanks for all your comments.  They are appreciated.  Keep ‘em coming.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Track light in SketchUp

We bought a simple track light to replace a flourescent fixture in our kitchen.  It’s copper-colored, with 3 lights and some twisty tubular structures to hold the lights onto a central base.  I installed it.  It works.  It provides light.  But it has all the ‘chic’ of lava lamp, though I don’t mean to insult the lava lamp lovers among us.

Last night I gave some thought to improving things and my laptop hummed as I used SketchUp to play with my ideas.  The first step, of course, was drawing the fixture itself.  That was pretty easy.  Then I started playing with framed wooden bases in an attempt to make it look better.   What do you think?   Seems like an improvement to me.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com