With the base glue-up completed, I placed the staves on it see how they looked together. That thing is looking way too thick. Maybe it will look a little better with the rounded edge profile.
Even with the alignment pins used for glue-up, there was a tiny bit of misalignment between top and bottom pieces. I ran a flush trim bit on both sides to smooth it out.
My largest round-over bit has a 3/4" radius. Not as big I I needed, but it was worth using if only to remove some of the material.
That's still way too thick. The proportions are really off.
I ran the base through the planer and took off 1/4" - 5/16" off the bottom. That meant I'd need to do something about the now-shallow driver pocket. I'll work that out later.
That's better, but I need to do some more work on that profile to soften it.
While waiting for an new edge profile bit to arrive in the mail, I thought I'd see if I could use my lathe to adjust the profile. I am not a turner (yet), and I did not want to stop to build those skills just for this project. But, if I could mount the base on a faceplate, I could at least use a sander to shape that edge. So, that's what I did.
Because of the LED driver pocket on the underside, I could not mount the faceplate directly to the base. Instead, I CNC cut an mdf disc to mount the faceplate on, which I could then mount to the base. I used a vbit to mark a cross-hair on the mdf to center the faceplate.
Even with trying to get the base concentric with the faceplate, I still got some wobble. Probably a consequence of my inaccuracies in mounting it and due to the flush-cut I did earlier that would have taken the base slightly out of round.
It took a surprising amount of effort sanding with 80 grit with a ROS to soften the round-over and make the top more pillowed. It's not perfect, but I think I can live with this.
I also added a 1/8" radius round-over to the bottom edge with a trim router. Removing that sharp edge helped to improve the appearance as well.
Maybe by the time I build another floor lamp, I'll have some real lathe skills to exercise.
Just a thought… Did you consider routing a narrow groove around the base’s perimeter (say, about one-third of the way up from the bottom edge)? It won’t reduce the base’s actual thickness, but it may trick the eye and help reduce its apparent thickness.
