Tag Archives: Wood lamps

A Lamp for Aunt Cari

Hyrum has wanted to make a wood lamp for his Aunt Carolyn, who appreciates art and craft. We began by spray painting the rough roots of an old stump. But the wood was so cracked and rotten that we could not work with it without it crumbling into pieces. We worried that no matter how nice the lamp looked, one fall would destroy it.

To strengthen the wood, we painted it with two coats of diluted wood glue, which sealed all the cracks and breaks and made the old root a solid piece of lamp wood.

We painted the wood again to cover the creamy film of the dried wood glue. Most of our lamps are stained various shades of brown. But this lamp we spray painted a glossy black, giving the rustic wood a sleek and exotic look. “Exquisite” as my sister described it. She was thrilled with her new lamp, and we were thrilled with her happiness.

Hyrum has become an accomplished lamp maker, with an eye for the right wood pieces.

Wood Lamps

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My children and I worked for months (and in the case of the featured lamps, years) to be ready for the Tooele Arts Festival, a gathering of more dozens of artists and crafters from around the American west, held June 14-16. I purchased a booth space to sell the family wares. This post highlights several wood lamps I made with my sons John, Caleb, and Hyrum. Displaying our art for three days was an intense and rewarding social experience as we interacted with many hundreds of people, not pushing for sales, but just being personable. We sold three lamps, five rag rugs crocheted by my mother, eight wood bird-beak back scratchers carved by Caleb, and two dozen papier mache floral jars made with my daughter Hannah and my sons, along with 40 copies of my book Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road. Making these lamps with my sons has been a meaningful father-son experience for me, and hopefully gave them a sense of creativity, beauty, and business. You can see our other lamps on the Woodcraft page of this blog.

Burl wood in Sedona red, by Caleb.

Burl wood in Provincial brown, by Caleb. (Sold $49.)

Cottonwood with larval etchings, by Hyrum.

Root stump, by Hyrum.

Forked branch, by Hyrum.

Slender branch, by Hyrum.

“Anchor” by Hyrum. (Sold $49.)

“Little Guy” by John.

Hyrum’s first lamp from 2014.

“Old Timer” by Dad (me). This one is on my night stand. (Made in 1993,)

“Stone” by Hyrum.

“Ripples” by Hyrum. (Sold $29.)

Wood Lamp: Hope

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“Hope”

My friend and business associate Randy S. commissioned this lamp, affectionately named Hope, as a companion to our beautiful wood lamp Waves. Randy selected the wood for Hope from several photographs I sent him in October 2015, seen here from three different views.

Hyrum (15) and I worked slowly over the next year and a half to transform this rough piece of wood into the beautiful lamp featured above. The first step was, as always, to clean and smooth the wood. Next we drilled the small surface that would support the bulb socket, stained the wood with several coats of dark Provincial stain, and inserted the nipple pipe and socket.

Preparing the table-top base came next.

We mounted the lamp wood onto the base with wood glue and several three-inch screws, wired the lamp, varnished the base and lamp with gloss polyurethane, and caulked around the lamp base. We routed the base bottom to house the lamp chord.

The final step was to suspend the lamp upside down between two padded chairs and attach black felt to the bottom of the base.

Randy took the lamp to his home office to join Waves after nearly two years. He said it was worth the wait.

(Purchase Price: $500.)

Baker Brothers Lamps was founded to help my sons earn money for the 2013 and 2017 National Boy Scout Jamborees and to pay for their high school athletic activities and university studies. It has been so fun for me to work on this hobby with my sons, transforming rough wood into beautiful lamps.

Wood Lamp: Joia

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Writing a letter to his Grandpa Baker (80) this morning for father’s day, Hyrum (14) turned to me and asked, “Grandpa has been finding some cool wood for me to make lamps out of. Do you think he would like one of my lamps as a father’s day present?” “I’m sure he would love it,” of course I replied.

Hyrum found the piece of wood for this little lamp when working for a friend to clear his yard and flower gardens of weeds. Obscured by the weeks was the small stump of a dead evergreen. Hyrum could see the potential in this dead stump. He asked if he could make something out of it, brought it home, and began to give it new life as a lamp.

We made bases for small lamps by cutting discs off the end of an old cedar fence post. The wood was old and cracked, but we wood-glued the pieces together, allowed them to cure, then ran them through a neighbor’s planer.

We named the little lamp Joia, a joyous Portuguese word meaning “gem.” Hyrum gave Joia to his Grandpa today, the same Grandpa that inspired our lamp-making in the first place with his lamp Timponogos, about 55 years old. Grandpa seemed as pleased to receive the lamp as Hyrum was to gift it. This little gem of a lamp has connected the generations with memories and a common love of creation and beauty.

Wood Lamp: Timponogos

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Wood Lamp Timponogos by Owen Nelson Baker, Jr.

In the late 1950s, when my mother was my dad’s girlfriend, the two of them hiked to the peak of Mt. Timponogos in Utah. (Nelson and Lucille have been married for 54 years.) The 20-mile hike ends with optional slide down a steep, half-mile-long glacier. (I made the mistake of sliding down this glacier 60 years after they did. I slid so violently and fast, hitting dozens of rocks and holes on the way, that I thought I was going to die. My backside was black-and-blue for months!)

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Timponogos Glacier

Owen Nelson Baker, Jr., my father, returned from that trip with a large piece of twisted root-wood on his shoulder. He sandblasted it clean and smooth, drilled it, wired it, stained it, mounted it, and switched on the light of this gorgeous wood lamp, which I have named Timponogos. The heavy iron base he hack-sawed off of an antique bird cage. The root-wood still contains a sizable stone around which the roots grew.

The antique oak table on which Timponogos rests was made by my father’s grandfather, also Nelson Baker, who was a machinist and mine foreman for the Prince gold mind in Pioche, Nevada.

Notice the solid brace construction.

I have decorated the Timponogos table top with antique tools made and used long ago by great-grandpa Nelson.

My father’s beautiful lamp, which I have admired all of my life, is the inspiration behind Baker Brothers Lamps, an enterprise in which I join my three younger sons–John, Caleb, and Hyrum–to make beautiful wood lamps that we sell to fund our attendance at the National Boy Scout Jamboree, and for their future college expenses. (Sorry to disappoint, but Timponogos is not for sale.)

Dad and the Baker Brothers on 9/11/2011

John, Dad, and Caleb coming home tired from the 2013 National Jamboree

We continue to enjoy making beautiful wood lamps together, the pictures and stories of which I will continue to post on this blog and offer for sale. Here are links to some of the lamps we have made thus so far. We hope you like them.

Wood Lamp: Stone

Wood Lamp: Little Guy

Wood Lamp: Grace

Wood Lamp: Dolphin

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Dolphin by Hyrum Baker

Hyrum (14) and I have worked on Dolphin for the better part of a year. This lamp began as an unassuming piece of weathered drift wood, distinguished by its beaver chew marks at both ends.

Not owning an air compressor (yet), Hyrum devised an ingenious, low-cost method of cleaning the wood of sand and dust: a bicycle pump fitted with a ball needle. Quite effective.

Drilling this piece of wood, 48 inches from nose-tip to tail, was a challenge, due both to the length and the twisting curves of the wood. We bored several holes with a long 5/16″ bit, then enlarged the holes with a 3/8″ bit. Having the end of one bore meet the beginning of the next bore was indeed a challenge, but we made it work.

For convenience, we decided to stain the lamp wood laying flat before mounting it to its base.

With the lamp stained once, we were prepared to mount it to its base. I learned the hard way on another tall lamp that a single bolt leaves the lamp wobbly, no matter how tight. So we used two bolts, ratcheting the nuts down hard, with large washers on both ends, and with a little lock nut to keep them tight. Black caulk filled the holes and covered the bolt heads. We drilled and routed the base to accommodate the electrical chord.

The next challenge was to thread the lamp wire through the several angled drill holes. We first used a coat hangar to thread a length of electrician’s tape through the lamp, then used the tape to pull the wire through the lamp.

With all the hardware work complete, we now applied more coats of Provincial WiniWax stain, then three coats of gloss polyurethane. We often use different color stains for the base and the lamp in way that highlights the lamp (see Waves, Smoke, and Reach), but for Dolphin, a floor lamp, we thought using the same color stain for both was more effective.

(Dolphin, in the final stages, is pictured in the background, with Grace in the foreground, and Smoke looking on from the sidelines.)

With black felt on the bottom and a simple but pretty shade on top, Dolphin is ready to swim into someone’s home. We suggest a value of $850 for Dolphin (though we are confident that it would fetch more in many boutiques). As a reminder, Hyrum is making these exotic wood lamps to fund his way to the 2017 Boy Scout National Jamboree, and then to college.

Making these lamps together, while each one poses its own unique challenges, has been a true father-and-son joy. I hope to continue our hobby into the future and Hyrum and his brothers become fathers themselves.

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