My homework prior to making the staves was to work out how to join them at 120 degrees to each other and allow for lamp pipe to pass through the center. This is the solution I landed on - a stacked set of CNC-cut plywood equilateral triangles, each keyed to index dados in the staves. Here is it mocked-up with some scrap wood.
The structure is remarkably stable and rigid once fitted together.
Time to make a router template for the staves. I initially printed-out a full-size outline of the stave, thinking that I would glue it to some MDF or plywood, then trim and sand down to the line. I didn't look forward to all that manual shaping, so instead I CNC cut the template in 3 parts. The CNC bed is too small to cut a full length template this long and I didn't feel like setting-up a tiling cut. Basically, I was very lazy at this stage. 😁
The original lamp was probably made of walnut. I used cherry because I had it on hand.
You know the drill - mark the outline of template on the work, trim close to the line on the bandsaw, mount the template with double-stick tape, and trim flush at the router table. Routing something so narrow is not ideal. It's less stable, and you really need to watch where you place your hands as you're feeding the work.
Routing the outer edge profile required some additional stabilization because the depth of cut of the router bit is the full width of the stave for most of its length. I cut an inverse pattern on the edge of some plywood and used double-stick tape to fix the stave in place.
I used this table edge bit to give more of a peak on the stave's outer edge than I'd get from a normal round over bit.
With one side done, I detached the stave from the plywood, re-applied new tape, and attached the stave inverted. Had the plywood been the same thickness as the cherry, I wouldn't have had to do this twice. Not ideal, but it worked.
All staves roughed-out.
Next I cut the centered dado for the joint. 3/8" wide, 1/8" deep.
This was a good time to pause for a dry fit. Time for the hot tub chair to get booted from the workshop.
