Staffs, staves and sticks to walk softly with.

Here it is! The first make post. I have a couple of projects already completed before ELabs was even a twinkling idea in my head, and whilst I'm scouring the internet for employment I thought I would flesh out this blog with a couple of things I've undertaken and as many (potato quality I'm afraid..!) photos as I've got to hand after my windows phone decided to just flat out die on me.

This build started with my parents, or more specifically my father's enthusiasm for feeding his log-burner and my neighbours desire to be rid of the trees in her front garden. The wood shed was looking a little empty so an agreement was made that resulted in a day of ladders, chainsaws and near-misses! By the end of it we had well over a tonne of wood.

This is kinda focused right? Right?? Well at least I could send texts...

Well this one is better... I guess...

I managed to snag several long and straight(ish) limbs from the trees that I thought would make excellent staffs! How exciting! I've made a staff before, but this is the first one I've had a chance to make since acquiring my "new" draw knife!

Sorry for the mix in quality, I just took this one on my new camera!

 In the past I've sat there by the fire, whittling the bark off with whatever was lying around the camp site - a pocket knife, an axe or rarely a stanley knife. Usually this results in a sore thumb as you use your thumb to lever and apply pressure - but with this! Oh man! The bark just flew off! Before I knew it I had shaved the bark clean off of a couple of the "staffs to be".

2 down, 3 to go!

So for the next 2 hours, give or take, I had clamped the wood in place and merrily shaved the wood to a state where it would begin to take its final shape. The draw knife left the surface very course and pitted - but like anything I suppose, you trade off time for results. In my experience a razor blade - whilst it takes four times as long to do (perhaps one staff in an evening) it gives a better initial finish. Now that these staffs were naked - it was time to get sanding!

Rough! But starting to take shape!

There was still daylight at this point. So I decided that I would take my little Ryobi sander and start to round off some of the raised knots and smooth out the notches and flat spots that the knife had left. This is where it starts to get messy! The payoff is really high though. This step it where I get to really form how the staff is going to look when I'm done. So I start with a really low grit paper to start taking this rough material off. I think in this case I started with some 60 grit, really harsh sandpaper. After some time slowly progressing through the finer and finer grains, I ended up with a staff that looked actually round!

Before and After sanding to 400 grit. Also consistent "artwork"!

This process creates a lot of dust, so if you're doing this you might want to consider what it is you're going to be breathing in for the duration of your work. For me it's usually a bandana or something simple for this kind of work, I only break out the mask if I'm doing spraying.

Dusty jeans and enough wood shavings to displace the pre-existing woodchips!

Now there's a little gap in the pictures here, as I decided that I would be taking one of these staffs and really finishing it as a gift for mothering Sunday (my father already has one I made him! and I know my mother covets it!). So I had to stealthily take one of these away from my parents house and get it back to my flat for further sanding and oiling - I really spend a lot of time hand-sanding it. I eventually worked up to lapidary type paper of 1500 and 2000 grit. I don't know how much good it did, but it's somewhat theraputic to just sit there and buff the hell out of wood. It's weird how shiny it can get without any wet treatment. Unfortunately I didn't snap a picture at that point - but I just immediately coated the staff in linseed oil (I love the smell of this stuff!). This is really my favourite part. When the wood grain emerges from the raw wood that you've spent hours with and you really see what it is going to be spending its life looking like. I always feel happy seeing those lines just pop right out.

Post linseed oiling. 3 coats and a day to rest.

This grain was interesting, patchy and spotty rather than stripy. Not quite what I was hoping for but it really got me wondering what kind of wood it was. I think it turned out to be an ornamental cherry tree, but I'm no dendrologist! The staff was now super shiny and I was really pleased. Time now to dress it up!

Unfortunately owing to a bit of a blunder on my part (basically using Zune was just too much of a pain, so I never backed up...) and a failed phone means that I lost the few pictures I took of this step. This was for my mother on mother's day, so I thought that I would set my siblings and my birthstones in to the grip, as well as give it a textured leather grip with leather oak leaf trim.

Tada!

You can see it all assembled here, but to set the stones I used a mixture of epoxy and sawdust I got from sanding this staff - usually this process gives me a nice blend so the stones just look like they're held on with magic. This one I wasn't so happy with - but we're all our own worst critics I guess! The leaves were individually cut, then I used a skiving type tool to cut "veins" in to them - each had to be punched so I could sew them all to that band with synthetic sinew. I can't count the times I almost gored myself with a bradawl doing that! Eventually I was using a mallet at my workbench for each hole.

The actual grip is attached with nothing more than friction - I wet the leather thoroughly, made a form out of gardening wire which I placed over the leather - wrapped it all tightly in green gardening twine and left it to dry for 24hours - the tension from the twine pressed the curves that you can just about see in to the grip, it also leaves this lovely tooling in the grip by its own virtue. As the leather dries, it contracts, and the fibres kind of lock together - some people use a little PVA to glue the edges - but I'd managed to skive mine down so thinly that it was a barely noticeable overlap that really held together - even today it looks like a continuous strip with barely any seam!

The final piece.

 All in all, it came out well, and my mother was very pleased. Still have a few blanks left that I hope to dig in to real soon!

Thanks for reading the first real post. Future posts will have a lot more pictures now that I've gotten a camera sorted and can reliably get at them! I hope that my artwork improves too!

Feedback is greatly appreciated if you've found this page!

-ELabs, James.