A project and a Half!

We have a huge tree in our front yard.

I think it's a fruitless Mulberry.

Every year, we usually trim all the new growth off (from the prior year) and cut the thing down to the huge nubs before or near Halloween.

Last year, we didn't get to it for various reasons, but this year, it's a huge undertaking.

I've been working on it every few days for the last couple weeks and here's several of the nubs I've cut back.

Here's how many I have left.... Needless to say, I've only accomplished about 30% of the entire tree. So, I have all this wood laying around, and I decided to do something with it....
What you say?
Lemme see...long straight sticks....Hmmmm.
Yea, ok. I decided to make Staves. Walking sticks. Plural of Staff.
Why?
Duh!
Cause I want to!

Here's the pile of sticks I've collected for staff making...

And some I've trimmed already...

So I have this pile of trimmed mostly straight sticks.

I figured I need them to dry out so that I can sand them, stain them, and lacquer them. But I had to take off the bark first.

I stripped ten limbs today and have them drying in my bathroom with a space heater to speed up the process...



FUN, FUN!
After they dry well, I'm going to go get several different shades of stain and stain them up, then probably a spray finish....
Ahhhh (sigh)....the things a FN HandyMan'll do to occupy his spare time!


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Quote for the day:

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." -- Albert Camus


and another one just cause:


"Drink, Sir, is a great provoker of three things, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, it provokes, and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to: in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him." -----Shakespeare, Macbeth, 2.3.26-37