All sticks with the rough bark left on should be neatly trimmed naked around the neck of the handle, and the whole lightly gone over with fine sand or emery paper. The cane should then receive several dressings of boiled linseed-oil and be left to dry. When dry, a coat of shellac varnish is applied. Oak canes look best when carefully barked in hot water, the loose bark being removed by rubbing with coarse canvas, and the cane then dried, dressed with boiled linseed-oil, again dried, then polished, and varnished with shellac or furniture varnish, and again polished.
Dogwood and Osage orange sticks can be stained black by brushing them over with a hot and strong decoction of logwood and nut gall. When this is thoroughly dried, brush them over with vinegar in which a few rusty nails have been steeped for two or three days. Some persons use ink for a black stain, others introduce “drop black” in the varnish; a brown or mahogany stain may be obtained by adding some “dragon’s-blood” to the varnish. The lower ends of the sticks should be guarded from excessive wear by a neat brass ferrule; these are cheaper to purchase at a hardware store than to make, though I have often used brass thimbles and tailors’ steel thimbles as a substitute. These can be fastened by means of hot shellac, or with a brass pin driven into a hole in the thimble and passing through the wood of the stick.
For fastening carved or rustic heads or handles on sticks hot glue or thick shellac varnish is used. A good-sized hole is first bored into the handle and a hole of similar size in the stick; a dowel is driven into the hole in the stick (using plenty of glue), after which the handle is driven on to the dowel-pin. Handles may be made of horn, which can be softened for bending by boiling in oil (not kerosene) or hot fat. Hard-woods that will take a polish, and vegetable ivory, which is very easy and pleasant to carve, are good materials to use for handles. For small sticks, bone will be found an easy material to shape into handles.
All the manufacturers of walking-sticks and umbrella and parasol handles state that the demand for native woods suitable for canes and sticks is constant all the year round, and that the sticks may be gathered at all seasons of the year and sent to market, both straight and crooked sticks being salable, also roots for handles.
With this we reach the end of our out-door handy book, which we trust may become the daily and invaluable companion of all healthy, active American boys. The in-door handy book, the book of electricity, and the book of mechanics for boys, which are to follow, will form, we believe, the distinctive American boy’s library of practical handy books.