Whale lamp out of baltic birch

I made this for my wife for our wedding anniversary. I may still paint it black and white so it looks more like an Orca.

I got the design on Etsy, and just had to tweak it in a few places. I had to use the passthrough on each of the middle pieces. I think it came out pretty great!

Here is the Etsy shop where I got the file.

88 Likes

Oh I do too! That’s amazing! (I wouldn’t paint it… maybe stain it…the natural wood is just lovely.) :grinning:

3 Likes

Killer project. I love that it’s both beautiful and serves a porpoise.

27 Likes

:smile::sunglasses::+1:

3 Likes

Oh, it’s beautiful! Very striking.

3 Likes

Thanks for adding the link. I didn’t want to mention this before but, I noticed a fluke in that design.

12 Likes

:rofl:

2 Likes

har har har

2 Likes

Wow. I wanna make one of those (Little trivia bit: some filter-feeding whales can unhinge their jaws to about 70 degrees. They charge into a swarm of krill or whatever at top speed and stop in a body length or two.)

2 Likes

Whoa. That’s super cool.

2 Likes

This is by far my favorite of all the lamp designs I’ve seen. Did you use GF PG material?

2 Likes

Nice job!

wow, perfect as is. That’s museum (or aquarium) grade

1 Like

This is gorgeous! And, I’m in the camp for not painting it…I love the natural wood color.

Do you have a pattern for four or five million little krill to hang in front of it? :thinking:

6 Likes

I am reminded of a time when the Candon Park Zoo was on Key Biscayne in Miami (before Hurricane Andrew) and the Seaquarium and research station was nearby where one researcher had some dolphins that appeared to be very old but still healthy, and the one thing that was different was that they would sneak up on seagulls on the water and eat those. So as they were in captivity it was up to the researcher to supply the birds.

So every day on cold mornings older birds would hang out on the beach as arthritis made such flying difficult (they were Snowbirds after all) and he was able to capture enough to feed his charges. Well one day a lion got loose from the zoo and was standing right in the path to the beach. Out of fear he grabbed a coconut to throw at the lion and hit it square on the head knocking it out.

Making it to the beach he discovered that the lion had eaten all the snowbirds so he had a heck of a time getting the ones that could still fly away, but he had improved his technique enough that he did get some and the lion was still out when he had to step across it heading back to his car At which point he was promptly arrested and tossed in jail.

I will leave others to guess what the charges were and will add that later.

Hint : He had been transporting young gulls across state lions for immortal porpoises.

Thanks everyone for your comments!

This was baltic birch 1/8" (3mm) plywood. It’s very strong; much stronger than PG. My local plywood store sells full sheets (4’X8’) for $15, and then I have them cut it (for free) into 19.5" wide strips, that I feed into the glowforge. It’s ridiculously cheaper than proofgrade, especially with shipping to me in Hawaii.

If you’re using 3mm, you should know that two of the pieces require using the passthrough slot. If you don’t have the slot, then the entire design would need to be scaled down.

4 Likes

Wow. Super nice. May I ask what the overall dimension is and what the largest piece’s dimension is? Thx

Nvm. I didn’t click on more description.

The largest part in the drawing has dimensions of 500 x 340 (for plywood 3mm thick) . For 4mm - 670 x 450mm

Hi, I want to try making this so bought the design, but it’s in dxf. So I used an online tool to convert it to svg, but when I import it the file is scaled very small. Do you mind sharing your process to import the file into glowforge app?