Articulated Floor Lamp – With Yardsticks!

I decided that I needed an articulated floor lamp. I found some examples that I liked on Pinterest and figured that I would make one out of some lumber that I cut down using my “timber tuff chainsaw mill“. As I was waiting on the lumber to dry a bit, I was inspired by some yardsticks that were sticking out of a bag that my wife was bringing to the library.

I figured I could utilize a bunch of yardsticks and make the joints with a simple carriage bolt or threaded rod. To make the base, I simply alternated longer pieces (about 15″) with short ones and glued them up. No need for fasteners. For the side pieces on the base, I just stacked short pieces and glued those items up. They were then glued to the base to make and ‘X’ for stability.

For the shade, we used an inexpensive 15” drum shade from Ikea. The cord was leftover from a light that was damaged and thrown out years ago. If you did need to buy a light kit, you can find it at Amazon for about $12 (Cord kit https://amzn.to/2Lsfwo5).

The joints are fastened with 2 @ 3 1/2″ x 5/16″ and 1 @ 2 1/2″ x 5/16″ carriage bolts with wing nuts. The wing nuts make it simple to adjust the lamp. This is also something that I had laying around from an earlier project, so there was no cost. You could easily use 1/4″ bolts.

The cord is just draped, but I could see doing something to bind it a bit more. We’ll see how it functions. Pictures below.

The 2 long sections of the lamp are full length yardsticks. The base is 16″ long and the upper “arm” is about 15″ long. Feel free to ask questions if you need a dimension.

The base:

The joints:

Drum Shade:

Good luck building your own. This was a pretty simple project that utilized some items that many DIY’ers already have laying around. A cool twist on this would have been to use vintage yardsticks, but I didn’t want to wait for time it would take an Ebay auction to end. If you ware looking for vintage, check out Ebay, there are plenty.

The best part of this project might be the limited tools required. A drill is the only real necessary hand saw. The cuts can be made with a simple hand saw.