Building a Cane
In late August, 2025, I built a cane† for an acquaintance from the Eldorado Farmers Market. Since I was recovering from surgery at the time, and couldn't spend too much time in the shop, I documented the build extremely thoroughly. Here's the build notes. Note that these are basically a (short) day of work each, though in some cases, two of these make up a calendar day.
- Roughing the handle
- Mortising the handle
- Finishing the mortises, drilling drawbore holes
- Making trenails
- Mortise cleanup and trimming the trim
- Cutting tenons on the shafts
- Fine-tuning tenons & octagonalizing the shafts
- Rounding the shafts
- Hole for the peg, shaping begins
- Shaping the handle
- Shaping the handle more, grain-filling, and fitting the tip and 11a: A sidebar on cane physics
- Finishing the handle, carving on the shaft
- Finished the carving, finishing
- Joining the pieces
- The final product
† I actually built two canes, since it was easier to do all the operations twice, rather than having to remember everything later when someone else asked me for another cane.
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