A Market Stick
I made this for the fun of doing so rather than for any practical purpose. There are plenty of web-sites and YouTube videos about stick-making so there's no point my repeating that information here.
These market sticks usually have a horn head on a natural stick. Horn can be bought but I haven't got the equipment to work it. Natural sticks aren't difficult to get but they should be cut in autumn and left to season for at least a year before use. As I was doing this job in March that wasn't practical so it was a case of using what I'd got.
The head on this is oak. The trouble with using wood is that it's weak across the grain; if it runs vertically the horizontal part is likely to break and vice versa. I therefore cut it with the grain going corner-to-corner. Even like that I wouldn't have fancied using very straight-grained woods like mahogany/meranti.
These market sticks usually have a horn head on a natural stick. Horn can be bought but I haven't got the equipment to work it. Natural sticks aren't difficult to get but they should be cut in autumn and left to season for at least a year before use. As I was doing this job in March that wasn't practical so it was a case of using what I'd got.
The head on this is oak. The trouble with using wood is that it's weak across the grain; if it runs vertically the horizontal part is likely to break and vice versa. I therefore cut it with the grain going corner-to-corner. Even like that I wouldn't have fancied using very straight-grained woods like mahogany/meranti.
|
Luckily, market sticks aren't used like normal walking sticks where you hold the flat part of the head which takes your weight. These are longer and are held at the top of the shank and used like a thumb stick or trekking pole.
|
|
The shank is a tapered broom-handle stained with van dyke crystals. To form the taper I took five passes off the bottom with a plane starting a foot from the end then another five starting two feet up. I then rotated it ninety degrees and did it again until I'd done four sides. I then did the same on the corners thus produced making it roughly octagonal. After that I shaped it as round as possible with a spokeshave and glasspaper.
The cutting pattern for the handle can be found as a PDF here.
The cutting pattern for the handle can be found as a PDF here.
