HOW TO CARVE A CELTIC KNOT WALKING STICK

So here's what we're starting with for the next walking stick. I've been saving this one for a while. It's a large piece of butternut. Had this off a neighbor's tree. He had to cut down one of the limbs, so I kept it. Beautiful dark wood on the inside. It's big. It's about two and a half inches in diameter. Here's for reference. See that circle? That's the size of the leg I got to get it down so all the rest has got to be trimmed away. So that's the first thing. Let's take off the bark and see what we have underneath. Okay, so we've gotten the handle pretty well laid out. Took a lot of material out, tapered it down, and this is the section where we're going to do the pattern. About 18 inches. It fits between that knot and that one there, just for a little easier to carve. So first off, what we have to do is set up just a starting line. So just with a ruler, lay out the starting line. Now what we have to do is divide the circumference of this section here and this section down here into even spacings. What I'm thinking is eight even spacings. So let me show you how to do that. Just take a straight piece of paper, wrap it around your starting point, and then make a mark, obviously, where they overlap. Trim that. Now this is the perfect circumference for that spot up there. So fold it, make a nice sharp line. Fold it again. Sharp lines. Fold it again. And when you unfold it, every one of these lines is a perfect distance to one another. So wrap that around, starting at your point, and you can mark off exactly your eight equal spacings. So just along these lines, go around at each one of your folds. And you've split this diameter the same. Now the bottom diameter here is going to be different. This diameter, because we've tapered it. So you repeat the process and make eight more lines. So we just linked up the two points all the way around and did our lines. So now we've divided this into eight even spacings. Now what we're going to do is make marks all the way down each one of these lines. I have this at 18 inches, so I'm going to mark out one every inch. So I've marked out every inch all the way around, up and down. And now what we're going to do is draw out the pattern. So there's all the pattern. I drew it out first in pencil, went over it in pen, so that way it won't disappear as we're working on it. So it's all laid out. It's been a better part of about an hour and a half to lay all that out properly, but looking great. So before we stick carving the pattern, I want to fix this on top. It's way too heavy and way more than we need. So I built myself a little pattern, a little half pattern, of what's going to be on top. I'm going to try and follow that along. Sort of egg-shaped. So sort of like what they do in turnings, just make a half template, and I'll be carving to that all the way around. Try and keep it symmetric. We're just about ready for finish. Let me give you a little rundown. Did a little pattern on the egg-shaped top, coming down to a nice handle. Did a little more of that dot pattern. Just a little contrast to make it a little darker compared to the Celtic Knot or the, we'll call it Basket Weave Part 2 or Version 2.0. A little bit more at the bottom, tapering down to where the rubber foot's going to go. This wood's going to darken up nice. Got a little vodka teak oil. Put it in a separate container here, just with a nice clean part of a rag here. Fold that up nicely. I think this color is going to darken up fantastic. All that detail, all that green. Start off right here. Beautiful golden color. A little darker on that hardwood. And that grain pops nicely. All that hard work sanding. Saved you guys watching me sand for about two hours, but all that's paying off right now. Let me finish off the rest of this, and I'll show you the shots at the end. Stay tuned. Well, I think we've come to a conclusion of another great project. How that came out. Wood came out beautifully. Nice, nice grain to it. That pattern really came out. I call this, I don't know, is it a Celtic Knot? Is it similar to my first video I ever produced and put on here on YouTube, this basket weave. It's a little more of an open design basket weave. So I'll call this the Basket Weave Pattern 2.0. Did a little dot pattern in the background to sort of darken it up and let the weave stand out. So when you look at it from a distance, it's the weave, that pattern, that really stands out. Continued it just a little bit further, top and bottom, but look at that grain. Here's a little side-by-side comparison between the first basket weave pattern I did and the one we just completed.