Tag: lanterns

bookmark_borderLantern Hooks

Posted on by Elliott Evans

I made these back in the fall of 2023, but was not able to finish painting them until Spring, and wasn’t able to try them out until Pennsic (and get photos), so here we are. These are metal hooks meant to hang the lanterns I made a four years ago from the camp walls I made six or so years ago. The problem is that the canvas roofs of the pavilions hang down over the walls for a fair distance. The past couple of years, I have tied twine to the ring at the top of each lantern, then hung the twine from the metal frame of the pavilion. The meant that the lanterns were hanging against the walls, which I found to be less that optimal. The hooks clip onto the tops of the walls, hang down to below the bottom edge of the canvas, and then extend far enough so that the lanterns hang straight.

The basic shape of the lantern hook
Clipped to the wall and hung with a lantern
Pull down the canvas to complete installation

I made these by buying 1/2″x1/8″ welding steel bars from the hardware store, then bending each bar to shape using metal bending jaws in my bench vise. because of the length of the material, I had to bend the bars off center so that they would not hit the beam of the vise. This caused racking in the vise, so I tried to bend two bars at once to balance things out. This bent the beam on my light duty vise so that it is now useless, It’s OK, that was a good excuse to buy a heavy duty vise to replace it.

I also tried using aluminum bar to make it easier to bend, but the aluminum does not stand up to sharp bends as well and sometimes just breaks. I painted the steel bars black to protect them from rusting (I hope).

These stayed up for 2 weeks at Pennsic without incident, and the lanterns didn’t fall off even in the severe rain storms that we had. Success! They joined the lanterns in the 6 lantern storage box that I built 4 years ago.

bookmark_borderElectric Andon

Posted on 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.

Three Electric Andon

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.

bookmark_borderShorou with Lanterns

Posted on by Elliott Evans

After completing the Mahogany Solar Flicker Lantern a few weeks ago, I was able to get a nice evening picture of all six lanterns in the project (with lighting units installed) hanging from the Belfry. Most of the glow in the background is actually coming from the streetlight which is hidden behind the belfry roof, but this angle makes the lanterns look much brighter than they really are.

shourou-lanterns.jpg

bookmark_borderLantern Storage Box

Posted on by Elliott Evans

I’ve only made three of these lanterns so far, but I intend to make six, so eventually I will need something to transport and store them all in, or they are going to get pretty beat up. So, another box.

Lantern Box, Closed

This was also yet another exercise in using up surplus materials from other projects. I wound up having to use a piece of MDF for the lid, because that was the biggest piece of anything I had left. The edges are off-cut from 2-by-4 lumber from when I was making pole by cutting square pieces from 2-by-4. It awfully satisfying to use up some of that stuff.

Lantern Box, Open

You can see that the extra height of the lid makes it easy to get the lanterns in and out of the box. There’s an extra half inch in each direction, so the lanterns fit snugly but not tightly.

The whole thing is finished on the outside with spar polyurethane, especially the MDF on the lid, to give it a little more water resistance than a cardboard box. I glued some blocks of wood to the bottom to serve as feet, so it won’t be resting entirely in any puddles.

Basically, the whole thing is constructed with glue and nails form the nail gun. The bottom is thicker plywood to make it bottom-heavy, and the rim on the body both supports the lid and reinforces the corners of the box. This is a design and method I’ve used before with some success.

A lot of the sizing of pieces can be done while you’re building. For instance, I make the body of the box, then I measure the outside of the top before cutting the pieces for the lid. That way the lid is sized to fit the actual box, and not just my best hope.

The whole thing is kind of rough, because it’s not supposed to be anything special. You can see in the photos that I didn’t even sand off the mill markings.

bookmark_borderOak Solar Flicker Lantern

Posted on by Elliott Evans

This Japanese-style lantern is very similar to a few others I have made, but this one is sized to accept a solar-rechargeable flicker LED path light.

Lantern in the day

This lantern is mostly made from some surplus 3/4″ oak I had in the garage. It uses the same mortise-and-tenon frame I’ve used for the other lanterns, except for the two diagonal braces just under the top rails. The suspension mechanism is also a little different, just some 1/8″ nylon rope inserted through drilled holes, and a brass ring.

The exterior is some Warlon Taf-Top shoji “paper”. This paper is coated with polyester fibers, making it water resistant and more durable than paper. It’s good stuff, and not that much more expensive than regular shoji paper. The paper is just wrapped around the outside and held in place with double-sided tape.

Drop-In Lighting Unit

The top part of the garden light drops into the top of the lantern and rests on the diagonal braces. The top part has the solar panel, battery, and bulb; and is itself sealed against weather. This makes it the ideal lighting unit for this kind of project. The bulb is actually a cob of dozens of LEDs that play a little flame animation. It’s very realistic.

Lantern at night

At Pennsic, the group we camp with likes to hang lanterns out in front of camp. Solar lanterns means we don’t have to worry about burning anything down or changing batteries. I’ll need to make a bunch more of these lanterns before Pennsic returns next year, if Pennsic returns next year.

bookmark_borderCypress Lantern Complete

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Got the pieces all cleaned up and glued together. Got the paper installed. Here it is with a battery-operated lantern inside:

Cypress Lantern
A hanging Japanese style lantern made from cypress.

Getting that paper in there, reasonably smooth, and cut around the handle was a huge pain and took a couple of tries. It should look nice hanging in our camp gate at Pennsic.

bookmark_borderWoodwork in Progress, Lantern

Posted on by Elliott Evans

I need to make a new hanging lantern for Pennsic, and I actually managed to spend some time out in the garage this weekend to get some of the bigger work done on this frame of the lantern.

Cypress lantern frame

It’s all left over cypress, joined with mortise and tenon joints. I cut the sticks on my band saw, smoothed them with a hand plane, cut them to length by hand, cut all the tenons on the router table, and cut all the mortises with a mortiser.

So, not a great example of hand work, but I might need to make a bunch of similar lanterns in the future, so I wanted to try to automate as much as possible. It still needs sanding, gluing, papering, and the insertion of some kind of light source.