Make Your Own Walking Sticks: How to Craft Canes and Staffs from Rustic to Fancy

By Charles Self

Take your woodworking for a walk! Woodworkers, carvers, and turners of all skill levels will discover 15 fun walking stick projects that range from a basic pine staff to a sophisticated brass-adorned turned cane. Complete with step-by-step instructions, detailed patterns, and in-depth coverage of shaping, turning, and finishing techniques, this boo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fox Chapel Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781607658986

Charles Self

Woodworker Charles Self is an award-winning writer who has contributed a vast amount of work to the woodworking field. In 2005, he received a Vaughan-Bushnell Golden Hammer Award for Best Do-It-Yourself Book for "Woodworker's Pocket Reference." His other books include "Cabinets and Countertops," "Woodworker's Guide to Selecting & Milling Wood," "Creating Your Own Woodworking Shop," and "Building Your Own Home." He has also written thousands of articles for publications, such as "Popular Woodworking," "Woodcarving Illustrated," "Woodshop News," and "Woodworker's Journal," and he has edited and consulted for companies such as DeWalt, Grizzly Industrial, mcGraw-Hill, Time-Life, and Popular Mechanics Encyclopedia. he currently serves as a director for the National Association of Home & Workshop Writers.

Book preview

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Before we jump into the walking stick, cane, and staff projects in this book, we’ll take a look at some of the different materials, equipment, and techniques you’ll want to know for creating these beautiful projects in wood. From choosing and harvesting wood to selecting the right tools and materials to finishing your projects, this section will provide you with all of the information you need to craft not only the projects shown here but also your own versions of sticks, canes, and staffs.

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WOODS FOR WALKING STICKS, CANES, AND STAFFS

Selecting the right wood for your walking stick, cane, or staff really comes down to a wood’s durability, its availability, and your personal preference. Generally, sticks, canes, and staffs are made of hardwoods for good reason. Hardwood is stronger in almost all ways than most softwood, so it breaks less easily and wears less quickly. Hickory, for example, makes a wonderful cane or walking staff wood, as do maple, locust, and sassafras (which has a wonderful aroma as you’re working it). However, almost any wood that turns or scrapes easily is worth considering, even if I don’t mention it in this section.

WOOD SPECIES

The list of appropriate woods for walking sticks includes fine hardwoods, such as cherry and walnut, and many of the exotics. More modern examples include mesquite, sassafras, jarrah, and African mahogany (see Figure 1.1). The chart on here to here includes photographs of woods to aid you in deciding on appearance. The list is far from complete, but it does cover most of the woods of interest to cane makers in this hemisphere. African and Asian woods are available but are not covered here simply because what you see listed is what is most likely to be easily found these

Reviews for Make Your Own Walking Sticks

[gkchandler-587869 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Once you know the basics of making a walking stick, how much more can be said?Charles Self manages to say quite a lot. Almost half the book is given over to "Getting Started", including wood selection, adhesives, hardware and fastners, and tools and finishes. His discussion of handles is limited to brass and does not touch on those made from other materials such as horn. Additionally Self mentions steam bending of wood to form handles, but this is well beyond the scope of the book.The second half is devoted to the creation of different styles of walking sticks, staffs and canes: flat walking sticks, "bark-on" sticks and canes, willow, patterns for carved sticks, lathe-turned sticks and laminated canes.Finally he mentions a few resources (I think they're all US-based) that supply walking stick hardware.After the good advice of the first part, the value of this book is in the description of different approaches to creating the walking stick, staff and cane. Once the basics of the different styles are understood (and this isn't hard) its a matter of being creative (and finding the hardware to finish it off). As an alternative to commercial handles, Self also discusses turned handles and naturally formed handles.Of particular interest is the process of laminating to produce a curved handled cane.Certainly the book is inspiring, and the book's finished sticks are beautiful works. But there is definitely an art to making a piece of wood look like more than just a stick.