hey i'm bob at i like to make stuff today we're gonna make a custom pendant light
if you've been watching for a while we've been renovating this kitchen and unfortunately we're
still not finished because we're waiting on countertops to show up so while we're waiting
on those we're going to go ahead and do some of the other projects one of the big ones in here is
lighting we've got some recessed lighting around the outside but we need some pendants over this
big island that we've made so we've looked around we found several different pendants
that are pretty cool we like them but they're kind of expensive so rather than just buying those and
putting them in we're first gonna see if we can make our own and then if they don't turn out
we can always fall back to buying some now making your own pendants is really easy and you've
probably seen this a lot of different ways you can buy really simple kits that are just a fixture
with a plug sometimes they have a switch sometimes they don't but once you get one of these you can
actually mount it to the ceiling with this simple cover now these two things together on amazon
may be 20 dollars so from here you can use this as a base to build a specific pendant
just like you like so this cover comes with all the hardware that you need to mount it to a box
in the ceiling it's even got a pass through that's white for the wire so you can hard wire the light
then you get one of these kits and you got to make sure that when you're buying these you look
at the measurement in between the three objects so in my case i don't really need the switch
and i don't need the plug so i made sure that the distance between these two is about a foot
enough that i can cut off because what i really want is a lot of wire with the fixture at the end
that way i can hang this from the ceiling take it up through this cover and hardwire it into the box
so just make sure that you look at that when you're buying these or if you can find one without
the switch and without the plug even better so the ones we found online that we kind of liked
are kind of a bow tie shape they're like this and then the top section is a little bit smaller
then there's some sort of a little nub that comes out and this was painted white and that was wood
so i started thinking about how to do this on my own and originally i was going to turn it on the
lathe either making these three pieces separately or try to make it all as one but then painting
this outside the more i thought about that the more of a waste of material and time it seemed
like to turn a big segmented thing and then paint it so we're going to try a really simple approach
with veneer for these shapes but then put a 3d printed piece right here in the middle so that
they have something to attach to so the first step is to figure out how to make this shape in three
dimensions at a veneer i went online and started looking for how to make a template for a cone so
that we could make those two shapes that i was showing you before and i ran across this website
i'm not affiliated in any way but i just found it and it's pretty amazing it's called blocklayer.com
it has a simple way to make templates for this shape but then when i started looking
around there's all sorts of different shapes that you can make you can make clock faces
and then if you go to the home directory you can actually find ways to make stair tread templates
and decks and all sorts of stuff the thing i care about right now is actually making a cone and
the cool thing about this ui here is that you can actually change all of the dimensions the top the
bottom of the cone and it updates in real time and then as you make changes it updates the template
you can save this template out as a pdf so you can print it out on paper you can cut it out on
a laser whatever but this is a really cool tool to be able to get different templates for different
types of shapes so i've made the two templates that i need for these two different cones and
i'm going to use the laser to cut them out just so that they're really precise but you absolutely do
not have to have a laser for this you could print them out full size on pieces of paper
and then use that as a template to put on your material cut it out with a bandsaw or a jigsaw
or a knife whatever you have i'm going to use the laser just because it's here and it's fast
as you can see this veneer has a lot of curve to it so use some magnets to hold it down
the first test i did actually i was worried that this piece would come loose as it got cut
and it did so this time i actually just scored them
on the top so it's not cut all the way through but it's about half the thickness of this veneer
and that works out really well because now you can kind of just break these away let me show you
so you can kind of tear that out with a little help from the knife and you've got a little bit of
stuff left over but that goes away really easily with some sandpaper
and sandpaper also helps get rid of the burn marker on the outside edge
now i've got six pieces of each one of these sizes cut and i've kind of just gently sanded
off the outside eventually they'll need some more sanding once i get all the pieces together
but the next step is to try to get these wet enough to hold them into their shape
while i glue them up so the first thing i'm going to do is to take two of these soak them in water
and get them pliable then i'm going to get them into the shape that they need to be i'm going to
clamp them like that let them dry then take them apart and wet them a little bit again and put on
the glue so the first thing is to wet these and to do that i took the top of this container because
i needed something really shallow but big and so i'm just going to stack these in here and put some
weight on them to hold them down fill this thing up with water let them soak for a couple hours
so one of the problems i see with trying to turn this into a cone is the wood grain the
grain direction is running like this this can be different on every one of these
but because that grain is running this way differently than it is over here
they don't uniformly fold into the cone so i think we're going to have to end up
making a 3d printed ring that goes around the outside that forces it into its final shape
it's the next day and i've got one of these cones that has dried out completely in this shape
with the prettier wood grain on the inside because i think we're going to paint the outside so this
part i think is ready to go we've also done some 3d printing we've got these inside pieces like i
talked about before but we've also got this ring now this ring is made out of four pieces they fit
together and then we'll theoretically go around the bottom of that to hold it into the correct
shape but these four pieces have to be glued together and to put them together i'm going to
use this gloop it's a specialized glue for petg and so we're going to glue these pieces together
into a ring let that set up and then we'll try it out okay so this piece has been in here for
quite a while it's going to pop back a little bit oh actually worked pretty well so this will
eventually get some glue but i want to make sure that this will be able to slide into this slot
and see if it will actually take the shape i think it will just going to take a little bit of
finagling
like i mentioned before this thing is in prototype territory and the further along i get on it the
more i realize i just really don't think it's going to be the final option it's not going to be
the thing that we want to put in the kitchen it's a cool experiment and i probably am still going
to see this through all the way to the end but while the glue is drying on that i think we're
actually going to switch gears i really like this i like how this part turned out i think this would
look really cool as the top of the light still but we need to work on the cone so rather than
go the veneer route i think we're actually going to stack up some plywood put that on the lathe
and try to get to basically the same point so let's do that real quick and just switch gears
ah
i think you can see what i'm going for here now that these are glued up once it's dry we'll get it
on the lathe flatten out the outside and then the inside but i'm curious from you at this point in
the video do you think the first one is the way to go or do you think this is going to be the better
option when it's all said and done so hit pause go down and let me know which one you think is
going to turn out or maybe which one you're going to like better and then we'll find out at the end
now we're ready to try this and i want to just put a disclaimer here and say that this may be
a very bad idea so i am not recommending that you try this but what i want to try to get the outside
of this kind of smooth is to use this tool this is an arbor tech tool called a turbo plane and
so i'm going to turn this in reverse and then just kind of scoop off this top sharp edge on each of
these just to try to flatten it out a little bit before we start working with the lathe tools this
should go a lot faster but it does have potential to be a little dangerous don't try this at home
i'm definitely liking where this is going i think it's got potential to be pretty cool
and i want to use this piece from the first iteration of this lamp but it was a little bit too
tall so i cut off the ring but that also cut off the taper that was on the inside that let this set
down without that little gap so now i'm kind of having to work around that i'm
going to take the dremel and scoop out the inside of this and kind of taper
on the inside so that it will sit down and hopefully be kind of flush
so i think these are the pieces uh and it should be good to go but we just have to
put some oil on this some sort of clear coat or oil on the inside of
this and then pick a paint color to go out here i'll probably do white but we'll see
then we just got to put it all together string in the light and hang it up
so
so here's the final pendant and i'm extremely happy with how this one turned out i'm really
glad that we didn't just keep going on one thing but instead shifted gears and came up
with a different idea i love the combination of the plywood and the white and the cherry
and i think we can use that same thing for the other two pendants so i have a question for you
should i try to replicate this two more times or should i use those elements
and make different shapes for the other two pendants to make three different things that
all work together but i have another question as well the veneer version of this light just
didn't work for me but i'm curious from people that have worked with veneer more do you know
a way that we could have made that work if so let me know down in the comments give me
your ideas about the other pendants down in the comments i would love to hear from you
we've got tons of other types of projects that you may want to check out and if you're not subscribed
be sure to do that as well that's it for this one thanks for watching we'll see you next time
and then to hold it together we're actually going to put after we had those sitting in
the water for the wa for for the okay that's not right but now that i've got this pace
let me know down in the comments because i would love some feedback
so that i could cover the plywood edge band
not supposed to film that you