Once the groves are cut into these strips they can be sanded well with 120 grit sand paper. I clamped my orbital sander to the vice and sanded the strips. After sanding I finished the strips with two coats of clear spray.
Now on to the base of the lamp. For this I used a red wood which will add contrast to the colour of the pine wood. The thickness of the base was 1.5 inches. Using a compass I drew a circle which is of the same size as a DVD.
Then following the line I can cut this at the band saw. You can use a jig saw too to make this cut. The band saw leaves cutting marks which I cleaned later by sanding it well with 80 grit sand paper and then smoothing out with 120 grit sand paper.
Time to assemble the CDs with the pine strips. To balance the CDs I slot them between two pieces of 2/4 wood. This would prevent the CDs from rolling away. Then I mixed some 5 minutes, two part epoxy and applied it between the groves. This should be enough to hold the CDs.
Here are the assembled CDs. Each stack has three pine strips arranged in a triangular way. The triangular legs balance the stack well.
Now the CDs need to be married to the base. To do that, first the LEDs have to be mounted to the base. I am going to use threaded rods to make this, on top of which the LEDs can be coiled. Make sure that the length of the threaded rod does not stick outside the CDs stack.
The threaded rods are secured to the base with a nut. You can also see that I have rounded one edge of the base and also drilled a centre hole. This would help accept the PVC pipe that I will be adding later. Also I applied two layers of clear coat lacquer to the based to avoid any finger prints. The threaded rods are covered with a heat shrink tube so that in the next step when I add led they don’t have a short circuit.
The LEDs come with a adhesive back. So I can just peel off the backing and stick it to the threaded rod.
Here the led connection is made using a 23 gauge wire. Then a small hole is drilled on the side to accept the power jack. I used a 2.5mm power jack which is commonly available in any electronic store. Finally to go with the white and wood theme I covered the based with masking tape and then painted the 10mm from the bottom in white colour to give a nice accent.