orStarting here since these form the basis of it all. I want this column to be all finished before making the lamp base. There are target dimensions (2" top and 6" bottom), and there are the dimensions that I actually achieve. Ne'er the twain shall ever meet!


Well, not quite. I need the struts first.

Cut a rough sawn walnut plank into parts, then lots of prep work to get them straight and square.

1" x 1" x 60" (x4)

Having done the large stained glass panel frame gave me the mental prep to get these done.
Long fence on the table saw and many passes through the drum sander.

For the blocks, I drew up a basic 2D version in a CAD program. Not really a necessity, but having a tool to get the dimensions easily versus finding and breaking out the calculator makes this easy.
The lamp column is a truncated pyramid and with my target dimensions the side angle is close to 2 degrees. Not something I want to rely on for many TS blade and miter angle setups.

With the CAD drawing, my new approach is to just export what I drew into a laser ready file for making templates.
No though process involved, just let the machinery do the thinking.

Thin hardboard cuts fast so I'll make the "master" templates from it.

This stuff is 1/8" thick. but I like at least 1/4" for use on the router table. There is always that gap between the bearing and cutter on router pattern bits.

Master templates are used to make these thicker templates:

These get attached to the project wood with double sided tape, which eventually pulls off layers of the hardboard. They really are just consumables.

The bones of these parts is 1/4" poplar (3/8" for the base).
With the templates and router, I get perfect sets of identical parts. Goes a long ways to getting everything to fit.

The center block pieces & template:

These all will be veneered and I did that next. Hindsight let me know I could have done this a bit later down the road and avoided a lot of taping for protection.

Anyway, I chose some camphor burl

(applied here to the center and bottom parts)

You'll see shortly how these will form the blocks.

Since these form the sides of a truncated pyramid, I did need to set up for some angle cuts on their top and bottoms.

Blade tilted to the 2 degrees, fortunately the design doesn't need super accuracy here.

I don't want to also set a miter gauge up to the 2 degrees any normally sane person would use to run the narrow parts past the blade.
I just placed them side by side, double sided taped to a hardboard sacrificial scrap. You can see the taped edges of the veneer to avoid chipping (if I had only waited to veneer later...)
The white squares are also DS tape for a top board.

Pass the sammich past the blade to get the proper angle. Flip the parts for the other ends and no worries about running a now pointy angled edge against the fence.

The base block parts can just be cut individually. Hardboard on the down side of the cut to make a zero clearance surface to keep the veneer from being flaked off.

Some corner blocks glued in place to form the pyramid.

The blocks are recessed from the top/bottom for fitting of the caps.
This right angle corner cut formed should now fit perfectly around the edges of the struts. 

For the original lamp I just made a block then cut the compound angles on the table saw. It was difficult to get it all symmetric as the TS fence needed to be moved plus the angle setting changes from 2 degrees to 4 degrees to get the needed cuts.

This "new" method was simpler.

Next time I'll begin with making the end caps to finish these off.