Fancy Wood Cane #023: Claro Black Walnut & Maca Wood

This is one of my favorites, as the handle is an extremely dense piece of Claro Black Walnut and the shaft is Maca which is not commonly found, although it’s being farmed and is quite beautiful. This is an earlier photo of this cane when I had first applied pure tung oil and tried a wax finish on top of it. That was a mistake, as the wax made it gummy and took fingerprints like crazy, but it gave the wood a beautiful depth of color and a softer, more sensuous texture than a hard finish. It also gave a more antique feel to the cane. Unfortunately the gummy feel did not seem durable or practical, so I chose to remove this and apply a different finish. It took several sandings and stripping techniques to get the wax off. A real learning situation on a bad finish technique. I still like this photo of this cane better than the new hard finish, but I like the hard finish better as a more usable one.

Here’s a recent photo of the same cane: http://lumberjocks.com/projects/11028
The new, hard finish is very different and the lighting in the photo is also different so it looks a lot lighter in color than it really is, but you can now see the graining of the Claro Black Walnut handle. It’s still a beautiful cane, just different in finish.

The background is our dining table that we made and is also posted in my “Projects”.

For more information on my work please visit: http://www.bigstickcanes.com or http://www.gallerymh.com

-- "They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." ~ Edgar Allan Poe