Making a Simple Walking Stick

[Music] so [Music] do all right welcome back everyone as you can see it's snowing outside early spring never know what kind of weather you're going to get but today it's uh snowing so we can't spend any time outside so got a quick project for in the shop so earlier this spring i made myself a walking stick out of an old part of a dead tree that had fallen down and we went for a walk this morning and this is from the woods said that she would like one too so today's project is another walking stick for this is from the woods glad you can make it i hope you enjoy this video let's get started so with a bit of research on the internet came up with what i thought was basic dimensions for a half decent walking stick so what i did for myself was i measured to uh the center of my elbow when it is resting comfortably at my side and at a 90 degrees and you would measure the distance from the floor to the center of your elbow and that would be approximately the center of the handle this handle is about six to seven inches long you can make it whatever you like and then on top of that i added another six inches so when you're walking around you can use it as a bit of a rest so the overall dimensions would be from the ground to center of your elbow plus half of the size of handle area that you wanted plus six inches plus or minus gives you a total length of your walking stick so this is from the woods has different measurements than i do of course she's a bit shorter than i am i'm 6'4 so mine worked out to be about oh 48 inches roughly to the center of the handle and hers is going to be about 45. so we'll use those measurements and uh we'll start constructing the walking stick so i picked out some branches actually they're not branches they are the tops of uh fallen trees and uh they have been sitting in the forest for quite a while so they're fully dried out and uh right now i kind of picked them up and cut them down to about oh just a little over six and a half feet uh that's probably more than enough we'll have to trim some of the bottoms and the tops of course knock off the little branches but you can pick anything you want this is a branch that i found was a little bit interesting you could make that the top of your walking stick and then put your handle just below that but most of these are just spruce trees that have fallen in the forest and uh i think the best candidate for misses from the woods is going to be the third from the right that one there it is straight it uh has fully dried out we'll have to knock the bark off sand it down and then transfer our measurements to that stick all i used to get the bark off was just a paint scraper you could probably use something else too a wire brush or depending on how hard the bark is attached to the tree but this was relatively easy to come off with a paint scraper and now we're going to start sanding it down to get to the fresh wood so you can see why these trees don't survive i guess first of all there are small trees in and amongst the big trees uh starving for light for one probably a little bit weaker than most and then they become infested with bugs and as i took some of the bark off you could see what was left behind by the bug infestation but i did cut the top of the branch off and i could count at least 15 rings and then they disappeared so i'm guessing this tree is somewhere between 15 and 20 years old but fortunately we can cut most of that off it's a little thick at the bottom for my liking it would be nice to be around one inches that way it's not so big on the bottom [Music] all right so we've got the branch or the top of the tree sanded now we're going to start making our markings so missus from the woods worked out to be 45 inches to the center of her arm here plus half of the handle length which we've determined to be about six inches plus the six inches at the top if that's what you want so uh total length of 54 inches will make it a bit longer so we can do a final trim after we do a fitting with misses from the woods and let's make those markings so as i was sanding i kind of determined that there was way too much wormwood here and didn't think that would look nice unfortunately the pole is long enough that i can cut it first at 64 inches here and then we'll measure from the other end and cut it down to about 54 inches plus or minus so the bottom of the walking stick ends up to be just over an inch in diameter a little bit thick but we can sand that down to a bit more of a taper and the top ended up being about an inch and a quarter so now we'll mark where the handle has to go so we've marked the handle location which is uh from 42 to 48 which is misses from the woods measurement of 45 less half the handle and plus half the handle that gets you a measurement from 42 to 48. so i tapered the bottom to just under half an inch uh just gives it a little bit more of a proper look for a walking stick and now we'll work on the handle location so what i did on my walking stick was i made a little recess to accept the paracord handle and i'm going to do the same for mrs from the woods it's just a little bit too big a little bit uncomfortable to hold it feels a little bit big in the hand so we'll recess the wood to accept the paracord [Music] all right well we've uh recessed the handle for the paracord on the walking stick if you don't want to do this part of the project you can just apply the paracord right to the walking stick without recessing it in the paracord gets really tight and i don't think it would slip so uh we're on to the next step we're going to do a final sand and we're going to bevel the top corner or the top of the stick just to give it a little bit of panache and then we'll start finishing it we've got the staff finished sanded so the last step is to cut a 10 degree bevel on the top of the staff just to give it a little bit more of a finished look and then we'll stain it the stain we'll be using today is a beauty tone water-based 100 acrylic stain we use this on our deck and some other projects around the property and i used it on my walking stick but you really don't have to do anything to it at all if you like the clear look or you can stain it whatever color you like whatever you prefer but we're going to stain it up quickly and put some clear coat on it afterwards we use an exterior water-based finish for the walking sticks just to give it a little bit more durability outside do [Music] so the walking stick has uh four coats of finish on it i used a water-based polyurethane a satin finish dries really quick so i put three coats on and then i burned in mrs from the woods initials into the handle and then i gave it a final coat to seal it in and now we're ready to put the grip on with the paracord and mrs from the woods has opted for black so that's the next step to finish off the walking stick okay well we're ready to uh put the grip on to the walking stick and um there are lots and lots of videos on youtube on how to uh do a decorative weave or um all kinds of different ways to decorate your handle but for today we're just going to do two simple knots one being the clove hitch and one being the half hitch and we're going to be using 5 32nd thickness paracord in black to do this so we'll start with a clove hitch and then we'll finish off with a whole bunch of half hitches which will give us the spiral effect on our grip okay well we're going to start with a little bit of an extra piece here before we put our clove hitch on but the clove hitch is essentially you go over and bring it to the right side of this piece and you loop it over and under and then this slides under here and then you tighten it up we're going to take a little bit longer and then we'll leave a little bit running this way but that's essentially a clove hitch we push it as far as we can down and we cinch it up and then this will be our tag that we're going to get covered that will get covered with the half hitches all right well i put a couple of the half hitches on and you can already see the spiral starting but the simple half hitch is you grab it and you twist it counterclockwise with the length underneath you pull it over slide it down and cinch it tight and these knots get tighter and tighter as you get going and you just keep on manipulating them nice and tight and again counterclockwise with the length underneath you loop it over the end of the walking stick and you cinch it tight and if you carry on then this spiral detail works it's all way all the way to the top okay well we're almost at the end of the grip but we don't want this to be showing so we're going to cut it off right about here now i just happen to have some side cutters but you can use a knife or a pair of scissors and we're just going to snip that off and then we'll carry on with our half hitches making sure to go over top of this that it doesn't pop out and that will disappear and you'll never see that end again and it'll never come undone so now we're almost at the end here we've maybe got two or three more wraps and we'll we'll show you what needs to be done to finish off the wrap okay while we've come to the end of our grip and now we have to lock this in place and what you do is you cut this reasonably close within about a eighth of an inch again with a scissor and in order to lock it in place you just use a lighter to melt the end [Music] and you have end nicely locked in place and that'll never come apart so we've ended up with about a five inch grip with about a six inch opening so about a half inch either way and it'll fit your hand nicely it's piled around with all the half hitches and we finished it off all right well that's the grip and as you can see the burnt end that locked the paracord in place uh kind of disappears in the black and nice tight half hitches to cover up the grip portion and i believe that is the conclusion of this walking stick so from two dead trees in the forest we've got two really neat unique walking sticks with the paracord handles and we're going to go outside and give them a try all right well that concludes today's video we had a fun time making a walking stick for uh misses from the woods nice addition to our hiking gear and uh hopefully we get a lot of use out of it but uh we hope that you enjoyed this video and if you did we'd love it if you would subscribe like and share and join us again for another video coming soon thanks for watching

Channel: From the Woods

Views: 20,714

Rating: 4.9201775 out of 5

Keywords: Walking Stick, Hiking, Paracord, woodworking, DIY, walking, outdoors, from the woods, kananaskis, weekend project, upcycle, reuse, tree, howto, clove hitch, half hitch, handle grip, knots

Id: wDKtnPDfICA

Length: 16min 7sec (967 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021