How to making hiking sticks and walking staffs

Proper and staining of your walking stick making project is a critical step. When making a walking stick or hiking staff you need to protect the wood from the elements such as water, snow and dirt. However, once you stain and coat the stick are you finished making your hiking stick?  have you considered other techniques of sanding off stain for contract or making images on you walking stick by sanding off stain? these are just a few methods shown in the walking stick making guides.

First before you do any staining make sure you walking stock wood is very smooth. I recommend to sand the wood in three steps starting with 80 grit, 220 and finish with either 400 to 600 grit.  I always go to 600 grit on my project to give me a better surface foe staining and painting. Yes, you can use an electric sander in the first rough step. However, I recommend hand sanding 220 and higher so you have better control on your walking stick making project.  After you sand the wood use your bare hands to feel the wood surface for imperfections in the are you plant to carve, paint or other aspect to make your walking stick project unique.

The image on this post uses a method of  blocking stain from certain areas of  walking stick to make a design on the wood. There is a trick to this method of preventing stain from adhering to some areas of the wood and not other areas. Beyond circles you can create whole images on your walking stick making project and create great shading effects.  Combine this method with other stain colors or paints to recreate scenes and add more personalized touches to your walking stick project.

How to make walking sick and hiking stick scout wood burning project

This is a follow-up on last months post concerning when to put on your walking stick making project.  Wood burning images on your hiking stick and walking stick project is a great way to add uniqueness to your project. You do not need to be an artist to learn how to make a hiking stick with wood burnt images. What you will need is a wood burning tool which can be purchased from as low as $15 or a professional grade wood burning tool for over $150.

The first step is to get he wood ready by sanding it to very smooth finish. You need to sand in steps from rough to very fine paper. The how to making walking sticks guides is a great reference and how to guide for all steps of wood preparation, staining, wood burning, carving and much more. Next determine the image you plan to create and transfer it onto the wood using transfer paper if you are not an natural artist like me or free-hand wood burn the image. Yes, I do free hand simple images but for more complicated images I always use the template method to create my walking stick project image.

The above image I did using a template transfer method.  The wood burnt area is approximately 1.5" x 2.5" which is a typical walking stick making project image.  I did not use any wood burning shading or other fine details you see on larger wood burning projects due to the size of this image. Also, this was done using a very simple low cost ($12 on Ebay) wood burning kit. Learning how to make walking sticks is a great hobby hat you can do on a very low budget. Yes, some tools can be very expensive but you do not need them as a beginner. However, the walking stick guide makes it a point to demonstrate all aspect of walking stick making using very low costs tools just as a beginner would own.