DIY: Make Your Own Wooden Lamp

Have you ever wanted to make your own wooden lamp? You may find it is not as hard as you expected it would be. This can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.

The most expensive part of this project can be the drill bit if you are going to use one solid piece of wood. Even at that, unless you have a drill press you will be taking the risk of not drilling perfectly vertical on through, and you may have to start all over.

Determine first how many of these lamps you want. You want two? Then you will be spending twice the money on materials. Of course, you knew that.

This wooden lamp consists of lamp wire, a light bulb socket with a turn switch, a plug for the wire, light bulb, lamp shade bracket, lamp shade, and...uh...wood. Three different sections of lathed sofa or chair legs at 6" long will be okay as long as their ends look good together. And don't forget some round bases for them.

Spend some time deciding how you want these legs to fit together before you drill down the center and glue their ends to one another. This will be the basis for your wooden lamp. Once you have that down pat, drill out the holes wide enough for the wire to go through, and glue the ends together with carpenter's glue.

Wipe off any excess and allow the glue to dry well. While it is drying, drill a hole into the center of the round discs. On the underside, chisel out or carefully saw out a channel from the center on out to the edge. This will allow the lamp to set flat over the wire.

You may glue, nail or screw the base onto the spindle of the lamp. Nail or screw it from the underside. When all of this is set in place, you may either stain or paint the wood to match or accent your furniture. I like to stain wood to bring out its natural luster.

Split the lamp wires apart for about 3" so that you can carefully strip off ½" of insulation from each end and wire. Take one set of insulated wiring, twist it and loop it around one of the screw heads in the light socket. Do the same for the other wire.

Slide the wire down into the lamp's spindle, out the bottom and lock the socket into place. You may find that the hole isn't big enough for it. Take the wire back out. Use a drill bit bore of the same diameter to the lower part of the socket, and drill down just enough for it to not wobble.

There are some lamp accessories that will make this process much easier. One is a short cylindrical pipe that helps the socket stay in place, and the other is a combination of threaded pipe and nut to go into the base. The latter is an alternative to using glue, nails or screws to secure the base in place.

Stripping the wire at the other end as you did before will prepare it to be snapped into place if you bought a locking plug as a lamp accessory. There are some that will "bite" into the wire so you don't have to waste the time in stripping it.

The next thing to do is snap the lampshade bracket. This may sound easy, but they can be fussy to install. After that is in place, install the bulb.

Now you are ready to top off your lamp with the delightful lampshade you picked out. The lampshade bracket may or may not have come with a finial to lock in the lampshade. This finial comes in all sorts of material, shapes and colors.

Voila! You are done! That wasn't so difficult now, was it?