Lightpost staircase

Instructions

Hello everybody, In our home, we have a tiny staircase where the original post was cut off by the previous owner of the house to have more space when big things were moved upstairs. That was a shame because it was a typical '30's staircase. So, the Shaper was used to finally finish the project. To prepare the post, I first used the planer to get a flat surface. I drilled a hole in the existing post to make the necessary electrical installation in the closet under the staircase. You can do this with a physical switch or (in my case) with the Philips Hue lightbulb (programmable and controllable with smartphone, watch or tablet). Second step was creating the base and wooden socket of the light post. I used a 25mm thick piece of Oak for this to get a nice and stable base with space to mount the lamp socket. The original post was chamfered at the end of the four corners so I did the same with the new basement. The Shaper was used to make the perfect round holes for the cables and lamp socket. Third step was to create a small "neck" glued to the baseplate for some extra distance between the wooden lampshade and baseplate. I also needed this 57mm long neck for the lamp socket and to make sure that the Philips lightbulb was placed in the lower part of the wooden lampshade to make sure that the light was distributed nicely. The base and neck were made with the table saw. Edges (45 degrees and glued together) where rounded off with an edge router (3mm) This combined wooden base and neckpiece is of course made for this specific staircase. It has a simple form to make the wooden lampshade more prominent, and at the same time, to keep the height of the post within practical proportions. Finally, the lampshade itself. This part was the main piece, made with the Shaper. I originally designed the pattern with AutoCAD. Converted it to Adobe Illustrator and saved it to SVG. I had a few small and long pieces of Oak slats leftovers. The worse parts were cut out, planed and glued together. With the thickness planer, the base panel was reduced to 10mm thickness. Size panel was: 250mm (width) x 1000mm (long). From there, it was Shaper Time! First the tape was brought on to both of the edges of the panel. The distance in between was divided by two more shaper tape lanes. To be honest, the left side of the panel was quite hard to cut because the machine was complaining about the little amount of tape that was left on the panel while working. Tip: make the panel 5cm wider so that there are two lanes of tape on the left side on the panel that will stay in one piece. Therefore, you have to move and place the drawing to the middle of the panel. First, I started with the 6mm router bit that came with the Shaper Origin to make all the pocket cuts. I did it in two steps. Each step with a depth of 5,5mm. I had an old piece of plywood (6mm) where the panel was sticked on with double sided tape to protect my MFT table. Second, I cut the edges with the 3mm router bit (also part of the standard kit that comes with the Shaper) and did it with an offset (inside) of 0,5mm. Also, in two steps (5,5mm each). With the 3mm bit, you get quite acceptable corners. For my own learning exercise and extra sharp corners, I did another round with a 2mm bit. Therefore, I bought the Collet Kit which has the 1/8 Collet for the small shaft of the 2mm bit. Here the offset was 0mm. The final touch was done with the Shaper Engraving router bit to chamfer all the edges. It was set “on line cut” with a depth of 0,5mm. It was not an advanced job but quite time consuming with all the steps. Like I said, you can do fine without the 2mm cut. You can even do a decent job without the chamfer with the engraving bit but the sanding job will take more time instead. I also did a “on line cut” 0,2mm, to engrave the outlines of each small panel piece and used it as a reference line for the mitre saw. The outside of each piece was cut under 45 degrees with the saw. 5 pieces of the lampshade (top, front, back, left en right) were glued together. The bottom was mounted to the base en neck. In this bottom (with the big center hole for the lamp), I drilled 4 small holes at the corners to mount the lampshade with 4 small screws on the bottom. Before mounting it all together, you have to cut or saw the opal acrylic plate in 6 pieces who will fit on the inside of the lampshade. My acrylic plate was 2mm thick so I used a knife to cut them. The small plates where glued on the inside with polymer kit to avoid dripping or stains on the surface. Lamp was fitted, the four screws where tighten and the lamp was programmed in the network. And it worked! The project itself was done on three Saturdays. Altogether, it took about 28 hours. Quite a lot of time but it was my first experience. I had a lot of fun and it was an eye-opener for possibilities and ideas. For those who want to try it, have fun and keep me informed about your results. Good luck!