Way back in 2000 WOOD magazine published a project called, "a wood turners walking stick", or something like that. When it was published the closest thing I had to a lathe was a shopsmith. No one, especially not me, would've called me a wood turner. In fact, I didn't even want to be a wood turner. When I did turn something purely out of necessity it amounted to a little bit scraping and a whole lot of sanding. Never the less, this wood turned walking stick project really caught my eye and I decided I'd try to make one. I did but I actually bought a spindle sander to make the finger profiles in the handle because I didn't think I could form them on the lathe, you'll see what I'm talking about in a minute. I then asked my  wife if she'd like one. She said yes but she didn't like  those finger things and could I do a checkerboard thing or something. Again, I had no idea how to do that on a lathe but here is what I ended up with for handles.

 

 

This particular stick on the right I did make on the lathe as I have since gotten a little better than I was back then.

This post however, is about how I did the crosshatch. Since I didn't know how to do it by hand I decided to make a router jig to do it. Funny thing, I didn't know how to do that either. Well, it worked. I made the handle, threw the jig up on a shelf and forgot about it. That was over 20 years ago. A couple weeks ago my wife  asked if I'd make a couple walking sticks for Christmas. One of them will be for our grand daughter and she is tiny. Wife said, "you'll need to do the checkerboard thing again cause her hand is to small for the other type of handle.  So, the last few days I've been trying to figure out just how the jig worked. Getting close now but still have some issues with it

Like I said, a real Rube Goldburg contraption, it's based loosely on the old Legacy ornamental mills.  I'm pretty sure when I first made this I used a hand held router. Just cannot remember exactly how I did it. You can see, in the second half of the video I've got some issues with slippage on the drive end. I know how to address that though and should get good results tomorrow or the next day. There is  only one video, don't know how to get rid of that screen.

Yikes!  

 

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Now that is clever! Took me a minute to figure out how you got the consistent rotation. 

6 hours ago, Steve Krumanaker said:

There is  only one video, don't know how to get rid of that screen.

Took care of Steve

That is slick Steve.  Nice piece of engineering there.

Very enlightened project.  Funny but I thing I remember that plan and have been thinking I need to make a cane but with traditional handle,

7 hours ago, John Morris said:

Took care of Steve

 

Thank you John, and thanks to everyone who replied..

I wouldn't call that Rube Goldberg, I though it was a right smart piece of work. Well done!