Weekend DIY | Multipurpose Cane

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

Napoleon Hill

Hello there, full-time weekenders!!

Let me start off by wishing all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Let next year's weekends be full of everything you love (even if that is just resting). To start off my weekend, I had to go with the recent DIY project that came as a sort of joke.

You see I was taking part in an event during November and someone told me I had to bring with me something related to the epoch. I don't have many old things with me. So I decided to make myself a walking cane and walk like a dandy during the event.

Here I want to show you the process of making the cane.

Let's get right to it!

Cut it

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I have had two branches of silver mangrove in the yard for quite some time now. Neither of them has shown bugs eating them away nor decay. I started to work on one a while ago, but that's an unfinished project. For this one, I took the longest and made took measures of how high should I make this cane.

Since it was for me, I decided it would be a little about my waistline. That way, it would be easy to mimic the walking pattern of moving the cane forwards and then placing it back on the floor.

My Japanese saw made quick work of this task. I also had the chance to give it a quick test. This branch had the added benefit of displaying a sort of handle at the top. And for sure that had to be part of the design.

Shape it

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In the shaping department, the ideas was to create a design that went with the natural curve of the wood. To make it lighter, you can see there are grooves at certain intervals in the lower part of the cane. These were a last minute idea that came to me just to make it look more interesting. It was easy to do it by using something round as a template and then using a rasp to remove the material.

Most of the shaping was done with an axe. This way, it became easy to remove as much material as needed to make the cane lighter and thinner. Of course, removing material this way was only possible in the lower portion of it. To address the thickness on the upper part, I had to use a chisel.

To give it a rounder look, I used my block plane to round the corners left by the axe.

Smooth it

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Smoothing the object is always a nice step as it goes almost towards the end of a project. We use the card scraper and sandpaper to create a smooth surface. We don't go above 220-grit since we want to apply oil as a finish and have it penetrate into the wood to protect it from humidity.

The final touch of this cane was made by my mom. She knows how to make these woven bracelets and necklaces. So I asked if she could make an ornament for the cane. She obliged. The result was this amazing braid that hangs from the handle. It actually goes through it. So it can only be removed if cut. But why would I?

This is the second cane I made this year. Maybe if there's someone interested in these things, I could make it a business. I wanna try making replicas of fantasy canes. The ones carried by the Istari (the mages of The Lord of the Rings) could be an interesting project and there are other from anime and pop culture.

That will be a side project for next year!

If you're wondering why it is a multipurpose cane, let me explain. It can be used to walk, to grab things, as a bludgeoning weapon, as an accessory, and else. Your imagination is the limit.

Well, there you have it. My most recent DIY project. What do you think about it?