S&UP

back to the future

Think what you want, but crafting a good stick is better therapy for me than all the self-help and good advice the world has to offer.

This one is challenging in more ways than one. Not my first of its kind, and for that matter the web is lousy with knock off versions good, bad and ugly (mostly bad) so the easy way isn’t in the script. Easy isn’t better.

Trying to improve on my first build was a straight up failure, steam bending to improve structural quality was not about to bend to my will over such a short section of heavy wood; the old timers making harness were bending much longer curves. This stick is mostly straight.

So, it’s back to the basics: stock removal to fit and create a channel for the tang to rest in, strengthening it overall, thru-pins and embedding into a semi-flexible urethane potting material ought to do it.

You can say it; modern adhesives aren’t in keeping with the old ways. As historical restorationists, we can say, “if they had it they would have used it”.

Along with other challenges the client will want to view it as a self-defense tool, fair enough as a specification; the only way to prove it is to test it, and that’s outside my domain, furthermore in places it could be mistaken for a bludgeon or weapon since a cane is a medical device in legal terms and has an interpretation.

So, we’ll call it a walking stick and be done with it, a C.Y.A. disclaimer.

Still in its cumbersome phase, a thousand trial fittings later, it should be done in time. Much left to do with no shortcuts; that’s what better entails. The post is a means of documenting its build, so I don’t have to keep explaining my process.

Stay tuned as the drama continues…or not.

Photo by Europeana on Unsplash