Walking stick -- myArmoury.com

Ken Speed · Posted: Sat 12 Jul, 2014 3:31 am Post subject:

Jean,

I get a kick out of the picture of your eagle stick where it's tethered to your door lever; it looks like it wants to get free and hop over and kill something! Comparing your eagle head and mine, somehow yours looks fiercer while mine looks sort of disdainful. LOL!

I think the carved shaft and brightly colored head draw more attention from the public than mine does. One of the reasons for this is the difference in size, when I'm holding mine most of the head is covered up with my hand. Your stick is bigger and draws you to hold the shaft under the head leaving the head visible.

When someone notices my stick I tell them that I have to take it out for occasional walks or it gets cranky.

Daniel Wallace · Posted: Sat 12 Jul, 2014 5:45 pm Post subject:

this is the best one yet in my opinion!

Jean Thibodeau · Posted: Wed 10 Dec, 2014 9:55 pm Post subject:

This stick is loosely inspired by North American Amerindian Warclubs, but put together very differently.

For the ball part I glued together 12 layers of 1/4" thick Purpleheart alternating the grain direction by 90° for each layer to form a cube of Purpleheart plywood.

I later used the Proxxon carving tool to turn the cube of Purpleheart into a sphere with a cutout to fit the stick part of the walking stick.

The stick part is a branch I salvaged a year before after a wind storm that brought down many branches from local trees in my neighbourhood.

I let the branch dry in my basement for a year before working on it. I put some vaseline at the cut ends of the branch to minimize any possible cracking of the wood at the ends because the cut ends tend to dry faster than the rest of the stick.

I left the bark on the branch during the time it was drying.

The branch is Hard Maple and actually is very hard wood although Purpleheart is about twice as hard as Hard Maple.

The ball is glued to the branch using Titebond III and there are also two 1/4" steel pins that converge into the Purpleheart sphere from the branch side and go about half way through the sphere.

There is a third pin inserted from the ball side that only goes halfway into the ball and meets the pins from the other side.

I first carved a pattern of low relief decorative cuts into the top part of the branch and then used a woodburning tool to darken the lines.

I also made some finer crosshatched lines to do shading on the stick.

Jean Thibodeau · Posted: Wed 10 Dec, 2014 10:03 pm Post subject:

Here are some more pics of the stick, some of the pics show the two steel pins going in from the branch side and the single pin in the middle of the Purpleheart ball.

Ken Speed · Posted: Thu 11 Dec, 2014 5:16 am Post subject:

I still say this is the most individualistic stick of yours that I've seen. A lot of your other sticks seem to have taken stylistic details from something but this one seems to be right out of your head only! After some study I do think the wood burned details on the maple shaft look a little bit like scrimshaw but even there the patterns are like nothing else! Congratulations Jean! It's really a rarity when someone comes up with something truly unique and individualistic!

Jean Thibodeau · Posted: Thu 11 Dec, 2014 2:35 pm Post subject:

John Hardy · Posted: Thu 11 Dec, 2014 7:28 pm Post subject:

That looks like a beautiful walking stick. How long is it overall?

I was also wondering about that ferrule on the bottom. I am familiar with the steel or brass "bucket ends" you can get various places for tipping walking sticks. Most of them are only a couple inches long. Of course, Lee Valley sells those bigger combination ones for hiking staffs that have interchangeable soft rubber or metal spike ends, but even they are only about 3 inches long.

Your walking stick looks like it has closer to the last 6 inches sheathed in metal with the end thick enough to hold a "crutch tip". Is that ferrule one you machined yourself for this specific stick? If not, where on earth did you find it?

Jean Thibodeau · Posted: Thu 11 Dec, 2014 8:12 pm Post subject:

John Hardy · Posted: Thu 11 Dec, 2014 10:14 pm Post subject:

John Hardy · Posted: Wed 24 Dec, 2014 10:56 pm Post subject:

Hi Jean,

Hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I just wanted to thank you for the tip about using those Windlass spear butts for cane or staff ferrules. A couple years ago, I made myself a hiking staff from the handle of a long-dead shovel. After I cleaned about 50 years of grime and dirt off the handle, the wood underneath was a beautiful piece of well-seasoned straight-grained hickory (I think - it might be oak or maybe even ash, although I think the grain is wrong for that.) I fitted the top with an aluminum knob shaped like a Scottish thistle and then put one of those Lee Valley hiking staff ferrules on the bottom, ending up with a 52" hiking staff. However, the ferrule always seemed a little undersized for the staff - a bit light for the balance, a bit short for use on muddy trails or woods, and the rubber 'city tip' has a gripping surface less than 1/2" in diameter.

Based on your suggestion, I ordered a couple of those spear butts (from Reliks rather than KOA to avoid cross-border shipping during the Christmas rush). They arrived yesterday and I replaced the 3" Lee Valley ferrule with one of the flat-ended spear butts tonight. It fit beautifully - just a bit of extra shaping with a whittling knife to fit the extra depth of the new ferrule, a bit of Danish oil to give a protective coat to the newly whittled surface, and I was able to pound it permanently into place with a rubber mallet.

The longer ferrule suits the proportions of the staff better (I think anyway), the staff balances in the hand better when I swing it while walking, the end can sink much deeper into snow or muck before the wood starts getting wet and stained, with a rubber crutch tip added it has a much wider and more secure gripping surface on city pavement, and lastly the new ferrule adds a handy couple of extra inches to the staff's height. Overall, a definite improvement. Thank you.

Jean Thibodeau · Posted: Thu 25 Dec, 2014 5:12 am Post subject:

Jean Thibodeau · Posted: Fri 20 Feb, 2015 5:51 pm Post subject:

I started a Topic a while back about making a wooden model to have cast in bronze and that Topic has a lot of information about the start of this latest stick project, so I'm linking to that Topic to not have to duplicate content and pics too much.

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...highlight=

Some pics I will post here as duplicates of the wooden model but will limit to only giving context to the finished stick.

The stick is longer than cane length so I usually hold it below the head unless walking down a steep incline, but I will also mount some of the heads on shorter hafts for proper cane lengths where holding the head of the cane is more comfortable.

The stick with a bronze head is heavier than most would feel comfortable using, but I'm getting used to it, but it is at the very top end of what I consider usable as a walking stick or a cane.

With experience in evaluating how heavy a wooden model might end up being in bronze I think I can design lighter heads in future projects.

I'm also very pleased with the collaboration having the heads cast in bronze using Tod's Foundry.

http://www.todsstuff.co.uk/index.htm

http://www.todsstuff.co.uk/todsfoundry/index.htm

Statistics:

Total weight of assembled stick: 4 lb. 5 oz.

Weight of bronze head alone: 2 lb. 4 oz.

Total length of stick: 43 1/4"

Diameter of haft at the head socket 1 1/4"

Diameter of haft at the steel butt socket: 1 1/16"

POB from top of bronze head: 12" ( The heavy steel spear butt end does help balancing out the weight of the bronze head although it does increase the total weight ).

Cross-section of the haft is octagonal and was made for me by my friend Ken Speed a while back when he sent me some stick haft blanks.

The haft is Ash.

Jean Thibodeau · Posted: Fri 20 Feb, 2015 5:57 pm Post subject:

A few more pics showing a group shot of the finished stick, the other bronze heads ( One of the six bronze heads sent to Ken Speed so that he can make his own stick ), and the original wooden model.

Rim Andries · Posted: Fri 20 Feb, 2015 6:11 pm Post subject:

Rim Andries · Posted: Fri 20 Feb, 2015 6:14 pm Post subject:

Gregg Sobocinski · Posted: Fri 20 Feb, 2015 8:55 pm Post subject:

Not only are these heads stunning, but they give the walking stick a weapon profile of a short, bec-de-corbin or long war hammer. The textured feathers would grip the target for impact, and the beak,-- well I don't need to point out the damage that could cause. All the while you've got an elegant, and probably comfortable walking stick. I love it! Well done!

Reinier van Noort · Posted: Sat 21 Feb, 2015 12:11 am Post subject:

Jean - fantastic work on that eagle head. And it works very very well on that simple ash stick.

I thought you might like to know that your topic on cutting the eagle head was one of the main influencers leading me to take up woodcutting as a new hobby! Happy

I also wanted to share a picture of my walking stick, made for me by Maarten Kamphuis of M-Blades. It is solid aluminum alloy (the kind that is used in aerospace applications) with a steel head. A little heavy perhaps, but it should be indestructible. Happy

Jean Thibodeau · Posted: Sat 21 Feb, 2015 2:47 am Post subject:

Jean Thibodeau · Posted: Wed 25 Mar, 2015 6:33 pm Post subject:

Not too many pics on this one since it uses another one of the bronze castings of the previous stick, so no point in showing too many different pics of the same things.

I took some pics before giving this stick to a friend, it turned out to be 37" inches and I used it a few days before giving it and it feels great in cane length and holding the handle in the reverse cane grip.

Because most of the weight is in the hand it feel lighter and more lively than the longer version walking stick length.

The 37" worked well for me, but I think I want to make myself another cane length one at 38" as I think I want it just a tiny bit longer.

Using the Hanwei spear butt tip also made the whole cane a bit lighter by 1 lb. and the shorter length gives it a faster pendulum cycle making it feel more lively.

The next one I make for myself will be with a rosewood handle probably but use the Windlass Spear Butts.

I used White Oak for the gifted stick but since the person I intended to give it too expressed the desire to have a dark wood shaft I used a propane torch to blacken the wood: This may be a surface change of colour but it does go fairly deep, so the finish is more than a surface one and unless one takes a deep chunk out of the wood the finish should be durable.

I finished the wood using mostly teak & tung oil although it can be and should be maintained by a wipe on wipe off application of Boiled linseed oil once in a while to maintain the finish or restore it should the stick's finish be dulled by rain when using it outdoors.

The patina on my previous stick is darkening naturally reasonably fast and taking on a dark green colour with tinges of almost blue.

Jean Thibodeau · Posted: Sat 28 Mar, 2015 6:29 pm Post subject:

Another of the bronze headed sticks, this time mounted on a rosewood shaft of rectangular cross section with rounded corners tapering to round at the spear butt socket.

The finish/patina on the head was done using heat and the " URINE " soak method and it produced a very dark reddish brown patina.

Since this is again using one of the same bronze castings no point in showing too many pics from various angles.