Making a Cane
How would I go about making a nice cane?
How do I polish the wood to make it look purty?
I assume varnish is involved and shit.
I intend to cut off a large, straight branch, whittle it into shape, and then what?
Let it dry? Immediately coat it in something? Halp.
How do I polish the wood to make it look purty?
I assume varnish is involved and shit.
I intend to cut off a large, straight branch, whittle it into shape, and then what?
Let it dry? Immediately coat it in something? Halp.
Comments
You can remove the bark to speed this up a bit.
Once dried, I'd do any whittling/carving you intend to do.
Do a bit of sanding to smooth it out.
Hit it with some oil based stain to your heart's content and let it dry.
Sand it again, and hit it with some varnish to seal it.
Let it dry and sand. Might have to do one more varnish/sand cycle depending on how much you sand down and how thick your coats are.
That'd be my suggestion going the branch route you intend.
Personally, I'd get a decent grained wood from a wood supplier and throw it on a lathe.
Put in some more uniform ribbing to make it look more cane and less walking stick.
After that, same finishing process i outlined above.
2) remove bark and offshoot branches
3) clamp it between two boards and leave it to dry out for about a year
4) varnish
OR disregard all the above and follow this video:
^Never tried it using a hot air gun before, it sounds a lot quicker.
Boat builders put planks in steam before they bend them onto boats. When I was a kid, I was fixing a wicker fishing basket with some coiled cane I had. I had to put that in the pressure cooker to get it to bend enough. I can still remember having towels wrapped around my hands as I bent the cane into place so I did not get burned.
I got burned anyway.