127 - A tall, slim hiking staff made from a stripped dog-rose stem and topped with a knob of black buffalo horn.

I stripped off the bark which, as often happens with dog-rose, had gone all cracked and crusty. Then I set to work to dig out all the soft material and see what I was left with. As expected, there was some nice hard, purple stuff underneath. Rather less expectedly, I kept digging away at the soft stuff right at the top of the staff until my carving tool came right out the other side! (A brilliant tool, by the way - the Ray Gonzales skew hook from Ashley Iles. It will nibble away happily in little nooks and crannies where a conventional chisel just won't go.) There was sufficient good hard material on either side to maintain the necessary strength, but it would prevent me from mounting the knob in the usual way with a stainless steel rod through the middle. I would have to use two smaller diameter rods, one on each side.

It was tricky, but it worked. I used a piece of black buffalo horn to make a knob, capped with a slice of lilac wood. A buffalo horn dowel was inserted to reinforce the joint between the two. I then whittled down a section just below the hand-grip area, drilled through it and inserted a piece of brass tube. This would enable me to thread a leather thong through the staff, while protecting the wood from wear.

And that's about it - a stick you can see right through! Needless to say, it's all good and solid and I have made sure all the aforementioned nooks and crannies are well sealed against any more moisture getting into the wood. The hollowed-out scars form a very comfortable grip which just fits the hand nicely, whether you're a southpaw or a northpaw. Actually, I think the southpaws get a slightly better deal this time, but there's not a lot in it.