The Ole Man and His Walking Stick

Basic walking stick for outdoor purpose. Comes in handy when living in the country!!

100 grit coarse sandpaper. 200 grit fine sandpaper. Semi-gloss or satin lacquer or Paint

You can choose a limb or branch from any tree of your choice. Make sure that it is around 3 to 4 feet in length so that you can shape it the way you want and to cut off the excess you do not need. As you can see, I have used a smaller one for demonstration purposes.

Next, shave the bark from the limb. I used a very sharp fixed blade knife along with an outdoor hatchet. You must be careful while doing this to go scrape the bark away from you to avoid any knife or hatchet injury. As you can see I have taken some bark off, this all comes down to your satisfaction. Do it the way you like.

Once the bark is scraped off, now it is time to grab the sandpaper. I used a 100 coarse grit sandpaper for the first smoothing session. Once you have the smoothness down, you can move to 250 finer grit sandpaper that will smooth the roughness and grooves in the limb. It all depends on you on how smooth you want the limb. You just want it smooth enough not to get a splinter.

The last step is to wipe the limb down with a cloth and clean up any residual dust and grit from the limb. Once you have this done this, you can apply a fine coat of of semi-gloss lacquer varnish and allow to dry. I used the spray can lacquer varnish at a local hardware store. You can apply 2-3 coats for protection to the limb. The natural oil from your hand will eventually wear down 1 coat if that is all you applied. Once done, allow to dry and now you have a walking stick or as i use mine to walk in the yard. In the picture above, you can see I have an old bucket sealer. This can be anything you would like to cure the wood with. If you want to paint it and antique then you can. Remember, this is your project. Do what makes you happy.