Vintage Style Wood Veneer Lampshade

I was strolling thru the flea market and noticed that nice desk lamp bases for a quite low price, but it was missing the lampshade. Since I liked it's wood texture, I decided to make the matching lamp shades. How I did it - you can see and read below.

No special machinery or tools were used for this lampshade, just common scissors, utility knife, hacksaw and other hand tools - no CNC or anything fancy.

For the materials, the following materials were used:

Small square rods of beech wood - these are sold at art and craft supplies and are used as inlays for picture frames to hold the glass. I'm deliberately avoiding any length recommendations - they heavily depend on your lampshade size, so you have to find it out by yourself.

Mappa burl wood veneer - you can use any, which matches your base, say, mahogany, maple or whatever. Just note, this should be a fairly thin veneer, but NOT the one with synthetic cloth backing, you'll need either bare veneer, or veneer on paper backing.

Wood glue, epoxy glue.

Small piece of plywood.

Transparent lacquer with glossy finish - Any common acrylic ones will work, but I've used nitro lacquer, for more "authentic" look.

Since I was missing the original lampshade, I had no idea how it looked, so I decided to make it based on some Tiffany lamps shape, but from the wood. Making the lampshade is quite straightforward - First, I softened the rods with the hot water steam. Then I've bended them in the needed shape (there are two sets of rods - inner, which hold the frame and outer - for decorative purposes), and used clamps to fix them in the required shape, until they were completely dry and solid (takes about 2-3 days). Some of the wood pieces were bent in the circular shape, some were left straight, and some went curved. For the top cap, I've used matching transparent plastic hemisphere, it was leftover from some other project.

There is a small circle, which I've cut from the plywood, which fits to the lamp base and is glued to other parts of lampshade with epoxy glue.

The trickiest part is the gluing the cloth to the wooden base. It is done in two parts. First, linen cloth is cut into pieces of required shape and is wrapped around the wooden frame. But before wrapping, it is soaked for couple hours into the wood glue, which is diluted with water in 1:1 proportion. Why this is needed? because wet cloth will expand, and when it will dry, it will shrink, and provide tight fit to the frame.

Cloth will completely dry in 2-3 days. I suggest to allow it to dry naturally - no need for hot air or sunlight exposure, because too quick drying will cause uneven shrinking, which will break the wooden frame.

After cloth is dry, I've glued pieces of veneer to it. Veneer was pre-coated with thin layer of wood glue before, and I've used hot iron to fit in the shape. After it all dried up, I've glued the external, decorative rods to it and applied lacquer to the whole lampshade. Let it dry for couple of days and here you are!

Here you can see the results. I tried to use wood stain on the one of lampshades, but while it looked gorgeous while off, when turned on, it delivered very weird color, so I suggest you to leave the veneer as is, since it will provide the best light transmission.