Post #782774 by Prikli Pear on Sat, Dec 30, 2017 8:24 PM

Thanks for the kind words, MaukaHale! I learned so much my reading everyone else's bar-build threads that I thought it only fitting to share my trial-and-error flailings as well. If someone can take inspiration from what I cobble together--of better yet, avoid some of my missteps--then I'll be happy.

Always a pleasure to have you comment on my thread, Wendy! If it's any consolation, more than once I've checked in on your thread and found myself going down the rabbit hole of previous postings--but this thread is only up to 7 pages, whereas YOURS is at 595! :o

A brief, tangential update for Christmas. The Wife's favorite movie is "Joe vs. the Volcano," so after reading Absolute60's Hula Lamp thread earlier this year, I knew I would have to make one for her. Here's the result:

Rather than cannibalize an existing lamp, I made the base out of scrap oak from my porthole project (the oak worked a lot better as a lamp base than as a porhole) and a lamp kit from Lowe's. I had an interesting length of bamboo that would work as the vertical body of the lamp. That was all pretty straightforward. I routered out a cavity for a music box movement that plays "Lovely Hula Hands."

The shade was a royal pain. I reworked the artwork for the shade, originally done by a poster going by the handle of Jintosh on the RPF boards. Then the shade I ordered from Zazzle turned out to be the uno type, rather than the harp-and-filial type fitting that my lamp kit was designed for. Very disappointed by Zazzle's lack of responsiveness on this, and lack of clarity on the lamp shade page. Nevertheless, I managed to cobble together an adapter, then added manila rope trim to the top and raffia skirting to the bottom.

More photos (and detail) than you could possibly want may be found on my blog writeup.