Buzzbait
Gold Member
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2001
- Messages
- 6,698
Heres Buzzbaits little gift to you guys in the Wilderness & Survival Skills Forum. Ive been reading and searching through the archives lately, trying to find as much information as possible on hiking sticks. I also searched the Internet quite heavily and had a few ideas of my own. Dying to put all of this useful information to work, I set out to make myself a good, hard use hiking stick that would last me a lifetime. I wanted something that brought out the essence of the Adirondack Mountains. I also wanted the stick to be functional, but without a million gizmos attached to it. So heres my little hiking stick FAQ. It encompasses pretty much all I know and have learned about hiking sticks through the years, and tells the story of how I made mine.
Wood Selection: There are many types of wood out there from which a hiking stick can be crafted. Many people prefer rattan for its lightness, diamond willow for its beauty, and ironwood for its strength. Seeing as I had an Adirondack kind of theme going for myself, I chose cedar. First off, cedar is quite durable. Ive fished a man made Adirondack lake for years. It was originally a canyon field with cedar trees, and was subsequently flooded as a log flow during the old Adirondack logging days. This was over a hundred ago, and the cedar trees at the bottom of the lake still stag my fishing lures on a constant basis. I figured that if these trees has been at the bottom of this lake for a century, and still hadnt rotted away, cedar was plenty resistant to the ravages of time in the mountains.
Cedar has a natural beauty about it thats hard to match. Cedar is also quite strong, which was proven by my efforts to obtain it. And of all the woods I tried out, cedar was the lightest. Lastly, I was able to find cedar. My area of the Adirondacks is filled with cedar, and has precious little of the more common hiking stick woods. So cedar it was.
Stick Selection: My next trial was to find a quality stick. It took some searching, but I managed to find a large dry area of standing dead. Many of the cedar trees had been marked for removal by the NYSDEC, so I wasnt impacting upon the wilderness at all. One tree was particularly large, with a couple of smaller trees growing from its base. I grasped the smaller tree I had in mind, and used it for leverage to climb my legs up the larger tree, and then put all my weight on the sapling to pull it down. Once Id managed to bring my choice to the ground, I measured out the best area to use as a hiking stick, added a little to my measurements, and chopped the ends off with my trusty Buck Big Sky. Yes, a machete would have been easier, but the Big Sky was what I had on hand. It performed admirably for such a small fixed blade.
I guess I should talk a little more about stick selection. I purposefully chose a length of cedar, which had a nice fat top end, and tapered down to an approximately one-inch bottom. The length also had a natural bend in its length, beginning very close to where Id be placing the handle grip. The bend was very important to me, because I like a small mechanical advantage in the pendulum motion used with a hiking stick.
While its almost always important to find a stick with no cracks in its length, this rule does not apply to cedar. Dead cedar saplings almost always have cracks, which never seem to affect the overall strength of the stick. I think of them as character marks.
Initial Preparation: So off I went with my stick, threw it in the back of the pickup, and headed back to camp for some a little wood crafting. Once back at camp, I set to work on debarking the stick. I used the Big Sky once again, which proved to be perfect for this job. I took long smooth strokes, only digging in deeply to remove some pithy areas that had begun to rot. I also had to force the blade through the sticks many knots, smoothing them as much as possible.
Once the debarking was done, I used my small Buck Cadet slip joint to smooth some of my strokes out a bit. I then proceeded to use 150 grit 3M Sandblaster sanding paper to begin finishing the surface. My final sanding was done with 320 grit Sandblaster until the cedar had a smooth velvety finish.
Final Preparation: As I ran out of time at camp, I was forced to move the project home with me. Once home, I gave the stick a couple of heavy coats of MinWax pecan colored stain. Once that had been allowed a couple of days to dry, I started layering on coats of spar varnish. Spar vanish is what is commonly used on the rails of boats. After applying four coats of spar, with a days drying time between coats, it was time for add a few adornments to my new hiking stick.
Mistakes: Loving the looks of the beautiful finish on my stick, it occurred to me that certain procedures should have been done before I began staining the stick. First off, I needed to cut areas for the handle and foot cap. I also still needed to drill a lanyard hole. Take my advice and do this before you stain the stick. These tasks took me twice as long, paying careful attention not to mar the finish.
Feet: The foot cap on my stick is actually a copper cap from the plumbing section of the hardware store. Many people use steel spikes, brass end pieces or rubber foot caps. I m not much for rubber. Steel spikes dont work well on the rocky creek beds I frequent, and I couldnt find brass. The copper foot cap should work out well though. I simply carved and sanded the very end of stick until the cap would almost fit. Then I just pounded the end on.
Lanyard: Many lanyard holes are drilled so that one can see through the hole as they grip the stick properly. I took a different approach and drilled the holes sideways. I then proceeded to braid a lanyard using two lengths of black paracord, and one length of rawhide. I ran the braid through the hole, bundled the ends into three groups of two, and proceeded to finish the braiding with the same three-strand braid method. If you have no idea how to braid, just find a woman. They same technique is used for braiding hair. I learned the braid pattern off the Internet, but my wife provided some invaluable knowledge on the finishing technique. Having one length of slightly longer rawhide left, I rapped the rawhide around the end and made a knot.
The braid is very strong and should have little stretch. The secondary braid is VERY strong, and provides the much needed strength to keep the lanyard from unraveling during use. The length of the lanyard took a little time to work out. Trial and error was the method here. I finally arrived at a length that allowed me to grip the top of the handle area, and still had some room for stretching later. So why did I braid? Braiding is quite strong, very pretty, and spreads out the pressure of the stick throughout its length and width. If any of you have ever used a single piece of rawhide, you know how that can begin to dig into your skin quickly during a hike.
Handle: After cutting a wide groove in the stick, which was the same thickness as my rawhide, I began a simple wrap. I draped a strand of rawhide and a strand a paracord next to each other, and then wrapped them together from top to bottom. The first ends were laid under the wraps and left hanging out the bottom. When the wrapping was finished, I simply made an overhand knot in the end and let the tag end hang.
I decided on a combination of rawhide and paracord at the last minute. Both mediums provide a good grip, but rawhide alone has some problems. Rawhide isnt very forgiving, so wrapping a curved area would create gaps. The paracord is very strong but malleable, filling in the gaps nicely. And as the diameters are just slightly different, the combination creates a ribbing effect for an even more efficient grip.
With all that said, the best is yet to come. Ill be taking my Buck Cadet slipjoint to this stick, and carving mementos of my various hiking experiences. Ill be headed back to the mountains this weekend for a weeklong trip. I plan on adding a few artistic embellishments in this time, as well as a fishing ruler along the bottom. I guess that only time and a little hiking will tell if my theories and construction run true, but Im quite hopeful.
Wood Selection: There are many types of wood out there from which a hiking stick can be crafted. Many people prefer rattan for its lightness, diamond willow for its beauty, and ironwood for its strength. Seeing as I had an Adirondack kind of theme going for myself, I chose cedar. First off, cedar is quite durable. Ive fished a man made Adirondack lake for years. It was originally a canyon field with cedar trees, and was subsequently flooded as a log flow during the old Adirondack logging days. This was over a hundred ago, and the cedar trees at the bottom of the lake still stag my fishing lures on a constant basis. I figured that if these trees has been at the bottom of this lake for a century, and still hadnt rotted away, cedar was plenty resistant to the ravages of time in the mountains.
Cedar has a natural beauty about it thats hard to match. Cedar is also quite strong, which was proven by my efforts to obtain it. And of all the woods I tried out, cedar was the lightest. Lastly, I was able to find cedar. My area of the Adirondacks is filled with cedar, and has precious little of the more common hiking stick woods. So cedar it was.
Stick Selection: My next trial was to find a quality stick. It took some searching, but I managed to find a large dry area of standing dead. Many of the cedar trees had been marked for removal by the NYSDEC, so I wasnt impacting upon the wilderness at all. One tree was particularly large, with a couple of smaller trees growing from its base. I grasped the smaller tree I had in mind, and used it for leverage to climb my legs up the larger tree, and then put all my weight on the sapling to pull it down. Once Id managed to bring my choice to the ground, I measured out the best area to use as a hiking stick, added a little to my measurements, and chopped the ends off with my trusty Buck Big Sky. Yes, a machete would have been easier, but the Big Sky was what I had on hand. It performed admirably for such a small fixed blade.
I guess I should talk a little more about stick selection. I purposefully chose a length of cedar, which had a nice fat top end, and tapered down to an approximately one-inch bottom. The length also had a natural bend in its length, beginning very close to where Id be placing the handle grip. The bend was very important to me, because I like a small mechanical advantage in the pendulum motion used with a hiking stick.
While its almost always important to find a stick with no cracks in its length, this rule does not apply to cedar. Dead cedar saplings almost always have cracks, which never seem to affect the overall strength of the stick. I think of them as character marks.
Initial Preparation: So off I went with my stick, threw it in the back of the pickup, and headed back to camp for some a little wood crafting. Once back at camp, I set to work on debarking the stick. I used the Big Sky once again, which proved to be perfect for this job. I took long smooth strokes, only digging in deeply to remove some pithy areas that had begun to rot. I also had to force the blade through the sticks many knots, smoothing them as much as possible.
Once the debarking was done, I used my small Buck Cadet slip joint to smooth some of my strokes out a bit. I then proceeded to use 150 grit 3M Sandblaster sanding paper to begin finishing the surface. My final sanding was done with 320 grit Sandblaster until the cedar had a smooth velvety finish.
Final Preparation: As I ran out of time at camp, I was forced to move the project home with me. Once home, I gave the stick a couple of heavy coats of MinWax pecan colored stain. Once that had been allowed a couple of days to dry, I started layering on coats of spar varnish. Spar vanish is what is commonly used on the rails of boats. After applying four coats of spar, with a days drying time between coats, it was time for add a few adornments to my new hiking stick.
Mistakes: Loving the looks of the beautiful finish on my stick, it occurred to me that certain procedures should have been done before I began staining the stick. First off, I needed to cut areas for the handle and foot cap. I also still needed to drill a lanyard hole. Take my advice and do this before you stain the stick. These tasks took me twice as long, paying careful attention not to mar the finish.
Feet: The foot cap on my stick is actually a copper cap from the plumbing section of the hardware store. Many people use steel spikes, brass end pieces or rubber foot caps. I m not much for rubber. Steel spikes dont work well on the rocky creek beds I frequent, and I couldnt find brass. The copper foot cap should work out well though. I simply carved and sanded the very end of stick until the cap would almost fit. Then I just pounded the end on.
Lanyard: Many lanyard holes are drilled so that one can see through the hole as they grip the stick properly. I took a different approach and drilled the holes sideways. I then proceeded to braid a lanyard using two lengths of black paracord, and one length of rawhide. I ran the braid through the hole, bundled the ends into three groups of two, and proceeded to finish the braiding with the same three-strand braid method. If you have no idea how to braid, just find a woman. They same technique is used for braiding hair. I learned the braid pattern off the Internet, but my wife provided some invaluable knowledge on the finishing technique. Having one length of slightly longer rawhide left, I rapped the rawhide around the end and made a knot.
The braid is very strong and should have little stretch. The secondary braid is VERY strong, and provides the much needed strength to keep the lanyard from unraveling during use. The length of the lanyard took a little time to work out. Trial and error was the method here. I finally arrived at a length that allowed me to grip the top of the handle area, and still had some room for stretching later. So why did I braid? Braiding is quite strong, very pretty, and spreads out the pressure of the stick throughout its length and width. If any of you have ever used a single piece of rawhide, you know how that can begin to dig into your skin quickly during a hike.
Handle: After cutting a wide groove in the stick, which was the same thickness as my rawhide, I began a simple wrap. I draped a strand of rawhide and a strand a paracord next to each other, and then wrapped them together from top to bottom. The first ends were laid under the wraps and left hanging out the bottom. When the wrapping was finished, I simply made an overhand knot in the end and let the tag end hang.
I decided on a combination of rawhide and paracord at the last minute. Both mediums provide a good grip, but rawhide alone has some problems. Rawhide isnt very forgiving, so wrapping a curved area would create gaps. The paracord is very strong but malleable, filling in the gaps nicely. And as the diameters are just slightly different, the combination creates a ribbing effect for an even more efficient grip.
With all that said, the best is yet to come. Ill be taking my Buck Cadet slipjoint to this stick, and carving mementos of my various hiking experiences. Ill be headed back to the mountains this weekend for a weeklong trip. I plan on adding a few artistic embellishments in this time, as well as a fishing ruler along the bottom. I guess that only time and a little hiking will tell if my theories and construction run true, but Im quite hopeful.
