Steel Floor Lamp - Something Different

As mentioned in an earlier post, I've been taking some Metal Sculpture classes at the Evanston Art Center over the past few months - initially a course on welding mild steel, and more recently a course on oxy-acetylene welding of non-ferrous metals (copper, brass, bronze, aluminum, stainless steel). A couple weeks ago I finished a project I'd started in the first course, namely a floor lamp, pictured here.

The outside ring of the base is solid steel, heated and bent into a circle and welded closed.  The other metal parts are square steel tubing, welded to the outer ring and together. The cord runs through a hole drilled in the outer ring, through one of the spoke tubes and then up the main tube to the lamp part (a three-way fluorescent fixture).  For a finish the steel has been power sanded and then waxed.

More Parallam Scratch Awls

I did turn a few more scratch awls - Rockler had the kits on sale again.  The light colored ones in the photos are turned from Parallam (see January post). The green ones are turned from a dyed, laminated material - I don't know which brand.

Spice Storage Rack

I didn't do much wood turning over the winter, since a lot of my focus was on my new-found activity of rock wall climbing at the gym and my metals class - this semester we're doing oxy-acetylene welding of non-ferrous metals.  And for the last month I've been recuperating from a car vs. pedestrian collision in which I was the unfortunate pedestrian.  But I recently completed a project I'd had in mind for quite some time: creating a spice storage rack for our kitchen pantry shelves.  I wanted it to be as compact as possible while providing a lot of storage, and it obviously had to fit and function within the available space.  My final design included 8 spice "shelves," suspended at the ends on a rotating frame system, much like a wide, squat mini-version of a ferris wheel.  The individual shelves stay vertical as the system rotates.  The rack will hold 48 small spice jars.  The wood used is principally cherry.  The only turned parts are the knobs at the ends of the center shaft, which are held by grub screws so I can disassemble the unit if I need to at some point in the future (the cross-pieces at the bottom are likewise screwed in place rather than glued).