Sometimes it's just about adapting....

Not all woodworking projects are the result of deep creative thought, nor are they standalone pieces. Sometimes it's just an idea caught in the moment, or something from the corner of an eye which inspires.

My youngest daughter recently purchased a tripod lamp in wood from IKEA. I'm not a huge fan of the flatpack furniture genre, and have managed to avoid visiting one of the Swedish stores since 1996, but I do recognise the price advantages and their place in the market. We own a tripod lamp already, but for a long time I'd been irritated (my OCD!!!) by the trailing cable beneath it. So seeing Charley's IKEA version with its cable tidy/spindle made me think.

On my last visit to the timber yard I'd collected some small walnut offcuts - around 5" square. Perfect starting size to turn my own cable spindle. And a straightforward job it turned out to me, start to finish in little more than an hour. Fitting it involved the almost sacrilegious slicing of it with a scroll-saw after finishing, so it would fit over the flanged central hub. But a bit of care and some strong wood glue and the spindle fits perfectly.

An easy job, and one less thing in the cottage to provoke my OCD! Thanks to IKEA.