Split Cedar LED Wall Lamp
In the making of this artistic wall lamp, I used:
- Cedar Planks (5/4 radius edge decking). One plank will be enough for a project of this size.
- Acrylic Sheet 3/16”
- Titebond 3 wood glue
- LED strip lighting - I think I said 4’ in my video, but it was an 8’ length of multi-color LEDs.
- TV Mount - there are many different ways to mount the lamp to the wall and I would do it differently if I did it again.
- Hammer
- Chisel
- Drill
As described in the video, I shaved the radius edges off the cedar planks. Because these were waste cuts, from a decking project I helped my brother with, their overall lengths were varied.
I then ripped the boards into 2 1/2” strips and from there I cut the strips to lengths of 6, 7 and 8 ½” blocks. These lengths were my preference, but there was nothing calculated about it. I pretty much set the fence on my miter saw and cut away.
It was then onto splitting the blocks. I tried to split them just off center – meaning I purposely avoided placing my chisel equidistant from each side. I also twisted my chisel right or left to get varying degrees of splits. This was important to me because I was looking for topography in this piece – which is also why I call this a work of art.
All told I probably used 16’ of wood. After ripping it in half, cutting them into blocks and then splitting those in two – I made over 100 split blocks. I still have several left over after making my lamp 40” wide and 20” tall.
Gluing all the pieces together took patience. I wanted the lamp to be random, but trying to be random is a lot harder than following a pattern. I want to vary the length, thickness, angle and color of each piece. Truly, this might look like the easiest part of this project, but I found it difficult to be so random with so many variables.
I would glue up 5 courses of lengths and then clamp it together. ***As an after thought, I should have run the finished edge through a joiner, because later, as I glued the acrylic strips to the lengths of cedar, any varying height between the wood pieces and the acrylic made for a poor bond. This project is extremely light, but especially if I were to make it out of oak or another hard wood, I can see were this could become a large issue.
After all was glued up and cured (I gave it a little over 24 hours). I installed the TV mount and the LED lights. This was probably the easiest part of the project – however, you’ll note in the video that I changed one of the mounting locations. I noticed - and I will CAUTION you to do the same – because my cedar splits were so varied, had I screwed down the TV mount in that location, my wood screw would have erupted out the front of my work – ruining it (in my mind). Be aware of how deep you can go when drilling/screwing into the back of the lamp. This was also primarily why I used simple thumbtacks to mount the LED light strip.
The LED light strip could have been mounted several different ways. I chose to place the light directly on top of the acrylic strips so that it diffused out through it and into the room. Admittedly, while I call this project a “lamp”, the light is not ideal to read a book under, but you could easily add more acrylic strips and LEDs behind them to illuminate a room better.
As pointed out in the video, install the bracket portion of the TV mount to a wall stud. Do not risk letting your work of art fall off the wall due to improper mounting.
I hope you enjoyed this video and if you would like to see my inspiration for this project, please check out this link –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAK8BEsslhs
be aware that the video is in German, but can still be easily followed.
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Music:
Breakdown - Take the Lead by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100796
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
Ecstasy X by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/
