Valentine's Day earrings.

Well I woke up this mornings realizing I didn't have a present for my wife! So when in need.... go with earrings. I had a few

scrap pieces of maple and walnut laying around, and I love the way maple and walnut complement each other. Needless to say she loves them! 

Dovetail Keys

Tried my hand at dovetail inlay keys today. It's really an easy process, and I've always liked the look. I like that it keeps the piece the same, but different. 

Rustic Lamp

Hey guys, so this past semester I attended a three dimensional design class, and the finial project was to take a item or items that have one purpose and turn them into some thing useful... so I made a lamp out of copper tubing and fittings.

I am still trying to be mindful that I have a blog, and I have a few projects I have done recently that I didn't take any pictures of, sorry!

The body of the lamp is copper tubing and fittings, and the base is a piece of fire wood I had in my wood stack. I cut the log in to a block on a band saw then used a chisel to distress the block to look cracked and aged. For a stain I used brown and black shoe polish in random spots, then blended the two with Danish oil, the color turned out nice.  

As for the cord, I wanted a vintage looking cord. I know you can buy vintage lamp cords online but I just took two pieces of wire and twisted the using my cordless drill. Using a drill to twist wire or rope is a fast and easy way to get a consistent wrap throughout the length of  wire/rope.

Finally, with keeping the rustic/vintage look I picked up a Edison bulb from Lowes. This project was Fairly easy, I soldered all the fittings in place and if you have never done this before its not as hard as you might think. All you need is a plumbers torch, solder, and some flux. Copper heats really fast so each fitting only takes about 30 seconds to do. Another thing to remember when soldering something like this, is this lamp is not going to hold water nor are most of us professional plumbers, these joints don't have to be perfect. If you get solder everywhere it's nothing a file and wire brush cant fix. 

If anyone wants to make something similar to this, let me know and I'll try to make up another one for a tutorial. Or if you might have a question about soldering fittings or wiring up a lamp leave me a comment and I'll promptly return a comment.

Remember if you do attempt any kind of soldering, plumbing or electrical you are dealing with extreme heat sources, so be mindful of your surroundings and your extremities!!! Burns happen often.

As always thanks for checking the blog out and keep coming back!