The most useful of them are the ash and beech, which can be stained and cut to resemble any stick, and form the raw material of almost all the shams. A goodly proportion of the blackthorn sold in the streets are beech sticks carved and dyed. It is easy to dye a stick black. Brush it over it with a hot decoction of logwood and nutgalls, and when it is dry give it a brushing with vinegar in which rusty nails have lain for two or three days. If you wish to dye it red, add some dragon’s-blood gum to the polish; if you wish it to be yellow, use ochre instead of dragon’s blood.
All sticks should be cut in the winter and left to dry in the rough in a cool place. If the bark is to come away let the stick be half dry before you begin to work upon it. If the bark is to remain on, let the stick get thoroughly dry before you attempt to trim it.
Ash sticks can be got from the hedge or the thin branches of a pollard, but the best are young saplings taken up root and all, the root coming in handy for carving. Oak sticks are easy to carve, but difficult to dry without splitting; they are the toughest and strongest of all sticks, and are generally got from copse-wood stumps. Holly sticks are best with the bark off; they are best when cut from the secondary branches that shoot up parallel to the main trunk. Sometimes they are found as saplings, and then the roots are retained as groundwork for decoration. Elm sticks are easily got and easily worked, but seldom turn out satisfactorily. Hazel, on the contrary, gives first-rate stick wood, and is soft and easily cut, and if tolerably thick and well dried it will not bend. Blackthorn is the best stick in vogue at what has taken the place of the historic Donnybrook, but there are many tougher and more trustworthy weapons for the peculiar recreation in which it is usually employed. It is an easy stick to prepare and polish, but like case-hardened iron to carve. We are told that those who attempt its carving generally borrow the tools from some unsuspecting friend! Verb. sap., or rather verb. to those who have dried out its sap and not discovered brittleness. Cherry sticks and apple sticks come easily to hand, and are not unfrequently charred with a hot iron and stained with acids to enable them to be sold as foreigners. Birch and poplar are best left alone. British vines almost always warp; and brier and whitethorn, like all the Rosaceæ, have wood that snaps and splinters on the slightest provocation.
To shape a stick use hot sand or steam, and fix it in the desired position when hot. To straighten it lash it when hot to a board, or hang it up with a heavy weight at its end. To dress it or polish it employ one of the methods described in the former part of this section.
When carving a handle, choose some design that will be smooth to the hand. As examples try a man’s head. One of the most extraordinary collections of walking-sticks ever made was formed by Robertson of Kincraigie, who was popularly supposed to be ‘daft.’ It was his practice to carve on his stick the head of any friend or foe he met with, and in time he owned quite a portrait gallery of wooden heads, which proved the cause of much wonderment to his visitors, for every batch he entertained had their features promptly reproduced in oak or hazel! As suitable designs for stick-heads there may be instanced dogs’ heads, birds’ heads, particularly broad-beaked ones, such as goose and albatross, snakes’ heads, fishes, and squirrel and beaver tails. To get good results proper carving tools should be used, cutting up instead of down with the grain; but capital work can be done with an ordinary penknife, the secret of success consisting in never cutting away a chip unless its removal has been well thought over. Carving stick-heads is not like carving panels, and fine work is out of the question with regard to them. There is not much room for improvement in the art. We saw in the 1851 Exhibition a stick carved in China 4,000 years ago, and it was as well done as anything now obtainable from the London stick-seller.