Bobs Stickmaking Pages - Collector's item #C023


	C023 - Collector's item: a miner's stick turned from ash wood and topped with a brass bust of a coal miner. Approx. dimensions: Overall length 38 inches / 96.5cm.
I believe this stick may have been made by a member of a coal-mining community and possibly presented to a miner on his retirement - or on some other suitable occasion. When I purchased it, it was clear that it would need some attention to restore it to original condition. The base of the brass top was surrounded by some sort of evil-looking brown filler, doubtless hiding something even worse underneath; while the whole stick had been coated in a thick modern varnish, probably polyurethane or yacht varnish, which had turned a deep yellow colour. For a ferrule, a short piece of roughly-sawn brass pipe had been jammed over the tip of the stick and a large-headed copper nail driven into the end.

The photos above give some idea of what I was up against. I would need to strip off all the varnish and completely refinish the stick. But first I needed to investigate that horrible brown stuff. I removed the brass figure (easy-peasy, the hot-air gun is our friend!) and found the answer to all my questions. The rectangular top of the shank had been routed into a round-shouldered tenon. The base of the brass bust was hollow, and an oval hole had been crudely cut out of the bottom to accommodate the tenon. I suspect the maker had used a rotary rasp to do this. These things can be difficult to control when using a hand-held drill, and he had managed to chew a bit out of the side of the bust where it would show. The resulting hole exactly matched one of my bomb-shaped rotary rasps! Either the maker was a furniture-maker or the shank had been "Wombled" from some piece of discarded furniture. It was a lovely tenon, but it was quite unsuitable for this job! The hollow base had then been filled with epoxy glue and plonked onto the tenon with no regard for a proper fit between the two parts. It was hardly surprising the perpetrator had decided to cover the evidence with filler! Although the base of the brass figure was hollow I found our little friend was, not to put too fine a point on it, thick from the neck up - in fact, quite solid. I was therefore able to drill right up into the head and insert a length of stainless steel studding, which would extend through the joint and a couple of inches down into the shank. I ground the bottom of the brasswork flat, cut off the tenon, trued-up the top surface of the shank, drilled it to take the steel rod, and made up a spacer of burr elm to blend the shapes together. I filled the base with black-pigmented epoxy resin/filler mixture and let this set before gluing the joint together. Here's the result (note the little black crescent in the right-hand picture - that's where the hole was)...

The shank itself is a very interesting piece of work, all done in one piece. The top section is a tapered rectangular/square section. This is what it looks like after stripping off the old varnish, applying several helpings of boiled linseed oil and finishing off with two or three coats of Tru-Oil gunstock finish...

	Below the square section, we have a round-turned section representing a miner's Davey safety lamp. The "window" sections of the lamp are delineated by thin brass rods (or thick wire, take your pick). The holes around the top of the lamp are represented by, erm... holes. Immediately below the lamp, a flat surface is cut into the front (only) of the turned taper. I have no idea why this should be - although it looks just fine to me, I suspect there may be some reason behind this, other than looks. Does it represent something that would have been familiar to a fellow miner?
	Here's the bottom end of the shank. The typical coarse grain of the ash makes some nice patterns where the tapered shape cuts through it. On the right you can see I have fitted a proper steel-tipped brass ferrule in place of the original bodge-up...
	...and here is what it looked like originally! The refurbished stick is now the property of a gentleman in Co Durham, who tells me it will be on parade at next year's Durham Miners' Gala. I'm very pleased it has found its way back into the mining community where it belongs.
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