Scroll Saw Blog

Somebody commented that these don’t look like Japanese lanterns, so I’m calling them “Rice Paper lamps” now . I’ve now got three of these lamps made now, and will be selling them at the Xenai Railroad and Arts show this Saturday. They measure 6″x6″x”10″, and feature replacable rice paper panels. The problem with earlier [...]

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Tonight I put a piece of rice paper in the PRR Lamp. Why only one? Welllllll….., I put the lamp kit in, but the threaded nipple supplied was a little too short to fit through the 3/4″ sassafras that makes up the top.  I’ve got a choice here for future lamps:  Get a longer nipple, [...]

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Spent the day in Pendleton, and worked on the railroad lamps.  I painted the PRR lamp, found the rice paper (that took some doing….don’t ask.) and the lamp kit.
I also did a couple more railroad sides. The hardest was the B&O, and of course I has to do one  of Chessie.  Here’s the Chessie side:

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We signed up for the Xenia Arts and Rail Festival for next month.  It’s not expensive, and we did pretty well last year there, despite not having anything railroad themed.  On the applicaton is an option for power. I haven’t been using the cash register lately–it’s been slow enough we really don’t need it, and [...]

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I put together the Japanese Lantern tonight.  It was pretty much drill the holes for the screws, cut the ricepaper and screw everything together.
Someone asked about the light hardware; I use the “standard novelty lighting kit” from National Art Crafts; it’s part # 400-658-01, and runs about $5.55.  (Note links and prices were as-of Jun [...]

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This morning before Church I drew up a new design for the sides of the Japanese Lantern.  This is a simpler patern than the bamboo, and is more of a geometric pattern.  I stacked 8 pieces of 1/8″ Baltic Birch and cut it out.  Right now I’m at the painting stage, then comes drilling for [...]

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Tonight I got the parts of the Japanese lanterns painted. I’ve got frames for three finished, not including the prototype. I did go ahead and re-do the prototype with the new screws I just go in.  The screws worked, but I forgot to adjust the pattern to take into account the 3/4″ top/bottom plates–since the pattern [...]

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This was a sick day, so not much got done.  In between guzzling down liquids and chomping pills I was able to move ahead a few projects.  The first is the Japanese Lantern prototype. After getting lazy I found out by screwing the panels to the frame I don’t have to glue the rice paper [...]

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No trays today. Nor any animal puzzles.  But I did get an idea for re-doing the Japanese Lantern pattern from a couple of years ago.  Problems with the previous pattern (which came from Scrollsaw Workshop magazine):
- The edges don’t have any reinforcement and tend to leak light and come apart
- The rice paper *will* get [...]

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