I finished another cholla and resin lamp this morning. Started pouring the resin for this in March or April, so it went somewhat quicker than previous lamps.

I’m using a solid pigment in the resin on this one, rather than translucent dyes, which gets a different effect. I like it, but I really want more swirly effects along the boundaries, which is going to require getting fancier about my pours.

That said, there are still some very cool effects in the resin, especially where I went back to fill in bits that had bubbles in earlier pours. I also like the more random arrangement of the cholla in this one. I basically just poured some chunks into a cup, shook them down, and started pouring, rather than carefully arranging the cholla first.

#lamp #cholla #resin #woodworking

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I made another touch control nightlight over the course of the past few months. The body is cholla and resin. The base is birch, and the top is sapele. It’s a nice red glow at its brightest, and barely noticeable at its dimmest, but it will last for over 80 hours on a charge at that brightness.

One of the things I found was that in dry weather, a larger touch-sensor is too sensitive, and will turn on with no touch sometimes. So this lamp uses a much smaller sensor which seems to work great, unless your skin is really dry. If that’s the case, put on some lotion or lick your finger.

The lamp is a little under 7 inches tall, and a little over 3 inches in diameter, and the guts are taken from a Lanterna lamp from Lee Valley.

#woodworking #cholla #lamp #resin

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After making a couple bedside lamps, I wanted to make a version more suitable as a nightlight. This is the result, a lamp in which the LEDs shine through the resin, illuminating it from within. The light is a yellow glow that turns red farther down into the resin. Not perfect, because the hole in the resin for the batteries is slightly (less than a millimeter) too small, so the battery case is protruding a bit, but it’s usable, and I can always fix it later.

Meanwhile, my sweetie isn’t sure which of the three lamps she’d like next to the bed now. This one is definitely the best as a nightlight, but doesn’t give off enough light to read by.

This was the most difficult to assemble of the lot, so I was thinking that if it wasn’t a hit, I probably wouldn’t make another, but it came out well enough that maybe I have to after all.

#project #lamp #nightlight #cholla #resin

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My third bowl made from cholla and epoxy. I laid the cholla canes in flat, rather than standing on end, and poured multiple colors of epoxy, tilting the blank a different direction with each pour. The bowl is just over 9 inches in diameter, and just under 2 inches high (so it probably is more of a plate than a bowl).

#woodworking #cholla #epoxy #resin

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My second bowl made from cholla wood and epoxy, with blue, green, yellow and red tints in the epoxy. The blue is darker than I intended, almost a black, but I think overall it works.

Sold as part of a fundraising auction to support MetaFilter.

#bowl #cholla #epoxy #woodworking #woodturning #resin

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This is a bowl I made from cholla and red-tinted epoxy. It’s about 8 inches in diameter and about 5 inches high. The cholla was collected in our yard near Eldorado at Santa Fe, New Mexico.

#woodworking #bowl #cholla #epoxy #resin

Discuss... Or contact me in the fediverse @davepolaschek@writing.exchange