Building the Cube Light

The Cube Light is a new table lamp that I just completed this past week.  For a while I’ve been wanting to design and build a light that has a lighter feel than the andons (Japanese lights) that I have previously built.  It took lots of sketching and head scratching to figure out how to construct the thing, and I thought I would share some of the construction details.   This design differs from my previous lights in that it’s not made up of individual removable screens, rather the whole cube portion is one piece.  The purpose of removable screens is to facilitate easy repair work, if/when the paper gets damaged and needs replacing.  However, at about 9″x9″x9″ the upper portion of the Cube Light is large enough to comfortably reach inside when the paper needs replacing.  I went with a heavy weight Kozo (mulberry) paper for this light and am really pleased with the results.

I started building light with the kumiko (the thin strips of wood that make up the gridwork).

The kumiko are western red cedar, and get thicknessed using a simple jig and a couple of hand planes.  The jig is simply a piece of mdf with a groove cut to the same depth that I want the kumiko to be, in this case about 2.5 mm.  One plane is set for a rough cut to quickly bring each strip close to final thickness, while the other is set much finer to give each strip a super smooth surface at the final dimension.

 

After a bit of planing I ended up with a nice pile of red cedar kumiko.

 

Next I started cutting the joinery for the framework, working first on the vertical pieces.

 

After sawing I used a chisel to finish notching out each joint.

 

Here are all four posts with completed notches, the other end of these pieces is done in the same way.

 

Here are the vertical posts along with the rails and their joints.

 

Next I mitered the posts ends on two faces to receive the rails for a clean mitered connection.

 

Once all the joints were cut and the kumiko grids were assembled it was just a matter of putting it all together.  Here one side is getting glued together.

 

The kumiko are connected to the surrounding frame with small mortise and tenon joints which makes the whole structure quite rigid.  When I do really thin kumiko work I simply drill a hole for the kumiko mortise, and instead of trying to square up an impossibly small hole, I roughly shape the kumiko tenon into a round shape with a knife.  The tenon doesn’t have to be perfectly round, especially if the kumiko is a softer wood than the framework, as the tenon will compress tightly into the hole.

 

Once two sides were together it was time to glue the rest of the cube together, making for an interesting glue-up and plenty of clamps.

 

At this point I got carried away and forgot to take pictures of the rest of the process…. so to skip to the finish, here are some shots of the finished light.

Thanks for visiting.