Lamp from a 2x4 - 2015 Summer's Woodworking 2x4 Contest Entry

This is my entry for the Summer's Woodworking Third Annual 2x4 Competition.
Shortly after last year's competition I was lucky to find two really clear 2x4s so they have been in my shop for about a year. One of the reasons framing lumber is cheap is because it isn't dried as much as other lumber. Especially if you are going to be resawing it into thinner boards it really helps to give it a few months to dry out before working with it but expect it to warp.
The construction of the lamp is mostly splayed miters. Matthias Wandel did a video on this and he explains it well so I have elected not to go into detail about it in this video.
Matthias's video:
• Splayed miter angle ca...
The main difference is that I'm using a sled rather than the miter gauge. This makes it a lot easier to deal with the small parts involved in the project. To get the miter angle I just cut a piece of plywood at the miter saw to the necessary angle. I also used the tape method to glue them up.
Because I wanted the grain to be running vertically first I had to glue up strips into a wide panel. I was selective about which pieces I put next to each other for the best grain match. Then I could just cut the parts out by flipping the strip over for each cut. This gives the best yield from the limited materials but it causes a problem.
The trickiest part was getting the layers to line up with each other, both in their size and the shape. Since I couldn't cut the bevels at the top and bottom of the pieces until after the sides were cut it was impossible to size the second layer exactly to the first layer. When you cut the bevel you change the size of the edge because of the taper. So I had to just guess at the right size and fortunately I was close enough.
When gluing up with the tape you don't necessarily end up with a perfectly symmetrical shape. When stacking the layers I just rotated them around until I got the best fit and then did a lot of sanding to bring them flush.
Once I had the three main layers of the base I realized that I preferred the shape upside-down from the way I had planned to have it. This changed the design because the diameter at the top was now bigger than what I had planned. It took pretty much every bit of the 2x4 to finish up the base. I used two different color stains to accentuate the layers and also mixed in a few layers where I cut the layer into a circle rather than having 10 sides just to mix things up.
Flattening all the hand plane shavings and gluing them one by one onto the shade was a tremendous amount of work done over three days.
Thanks to Brian for hosting the competition and Matthias for doing the math!
Music by Dan-O at danosongs.com