After stumbling across Shawn Gillis on instagram and spending hours browsing through his amazing walking sticks, and having hit the ripe old age of 40 recently, I felt inspired to try my hand at making one.
As this is my first attempt I wanted to avoid making any design decisions and focus on how to technically make a walking stick that is straight and won't break. I found and printed a template for the handle, selected some stock and set about cutting it out on the bandsaw. A quick cleanup and heavy round over was all it took to rather well resemble a walking stick handle.
I forget whether I had seen it on @walkingwithwood's posts, or just assumed from seeing similar builds, but either way, I drilled mortices in the handle and the cane stock to accept a brass pin. I also cut a piece of brass sheet for a transition. Epoxying these onto the handle was straight forward.
Unfortunately my efforts to get the mortice in the can straight were less successful. I had some latitude in the oversized stock, which allowed me to straighten it somewhat when cutting away the excess. In hindsight this has resulted in a different grain pattern than you might expect, and thinking about now that could increase the probability of some warping? We'll see, but food for thought. Anyway, I eventually got the cane fulled glued (epoxied) up.
I've not used a spoke shave much before this, so I was quite apprehensive about shaping the cane by hand. I shouldn't have worried and in just 30 minutes I had it well shaped and ready for clean up and refining.
As this is my first attempt I wanted to avoid making any design decisions and focus on how to technically make a walking stick that is straight and won't break. I found and printed a template for the handle, selected some stock and set about cutting it out on the bandsaw. A quick cleanup and heavy round over was all it took to rather well resemble a walking stick handle.
I forget whether I had seen it on @walkingwithwood's posts, or just assumed from seeing similar builds, but either way, I drilled mortices in the handle and the cane stock to accept a brass pin. I also cut a piece of brass sheet for a transition. Epoxying these onto the handle was straight forward.
Unfortunately my efforts to get the mortice in the can straight were less successful. I had some latitude in the oversized stock, which allowed me to straighten it somewhat when cutting away the excess. In hindsight this has resulted in a different grain pattern than you might expect, and thinking about now that could increase the probability of some warping? We'll see, but food for thought. Anyway, I eventually got the cane fulled glued (epoxied) up.
I've not used a spoke shave much before this, so I was quite apprehensive about shaping the cane by hand. I shouldn't have worried and in just 30 minutes I had it well shaped and ready for clean up and refining.
i would hazard a guess at Ash
.
