andon – Nothing In It

Electric Andon

Posted on 2024.02.08 by Elliott Evans

I have made quite a few wooden frame lanterns, called andon in Japanese, but most of them were designed around battery-powered lights of one kind or another. The battery-powered LED lights look great, but they are not nearly as bright as regular electric bulbs run off AC power. So, since our camp at Pennsic has AC power at least most of the time, I decided to make some new andon around high output (1000 lumen) LED bulbs.

These are the first three I made, hanging in the shourou. Look at how bright they are! I bought some black appliance cords at the Lowes, then spliced outdoor light sockets onto the ends. The cords are probably overkill electrically, but they come with molded plugs already on one end and stripped wires at the other. Perfect for projects. The lantern actually hangs from the fixture.

Here’s the one I made as a present for Sharon. This cord is a little longer than the others to enable this specific hanging arrangement. There is a switched outlet right at the base of the windows next to the front door.

Poplar Solar Flicker Lantern

Posted on 2020.12.072020.12.08 by Elliott Evans

Progress on the wood frame lanterns to fit the solar flicker lighting units continues! I completed the fifth of six planned lanterns recently, this one made from some surplus poplar lumber I had in the garage.

Here is the lantern hanging in the Shourou at night after a recent snowfall:

Here is the lantern storage box almost full of lanterns:

Mulberry Andon

Posted on 2020.11.152020.11.15 by Elliott Evans

I just completed another lantern for the “six lanterns” project. The frame of this one is made out of mulberry wood. I had a small plank of this that Mr. Arimoto gave to me probably about seven years ago, and it seemed like a good project to use it on.

Of course, with the paper on it like that, you can barely see any of the wood. The fibers in this plank were very rough and wavy, but in the places where my plane got a good shaving, the surface is super-nice.

I rough-milled the sticks from the plank using my band saw, then hand planed them down to 3/4″ square rods. There really wasn’t enough wood in the plank to make it entirely from mulberry. To compensate, I made some of the stretchers a little shorter than normal, and used dowel joinery instead of my usual mortise and tenon joinery. This was a little easier, since it meant cutting short lengths of dowel instead of cutting 16 tenons, but it meant drilling twice as many mortises, half of them into the ends of stretchers. I could not have done it without my drill press.

Anyway, it joins the other three lanterns (oak, maple, and cherry) in the lantern box.

Cherry Andon Lamp

Posted on 2020.09.082020.09.08 by Elliott Evans

An andon is a type of Japanese lantern that is usually used indoors by people who are seated on the floor. I think that, technically, any “framed paper” lantern is an andon, but the word is most often used to refer to the floor-standing version. That may be because most hanging lanterns you see are the collapsible paper chochin type.

I’ve been wanting to make a tall, floor standing andon for about five years, and took the opportunity to cut pieces for this one when I was preparing materials for the Cherry Solar Flicker Lantern project.

This andon is about 34 inches tall and 7.5 inches deep/wide. It’s made from cherry. To keep it from being tippy, the base is a solid block of cherry two inches thick. It uses a different lighting system than the hanging lanterns. This one is designed to suspend a NEBO Tools “BIG Poppy” lantern inside.

Here you can see how the Poppy is suspended from the diagonal crossbeam. This is also a better view of the handle. I cut the through-mortise into a rectangular block first, then cut the curved handle from that block. You can also see the seam where the paper is taped closed at the front corner. Even in the light it doesn’t look bad.