Concentrating on a few hard wood crooks and a couple of hard wood orders. We never know what a customer may ask to have created, as was the case when we received a inquiry from a gentleman who wanted part of his coat of arms engraving on a wood crook handle. After receiving a copy of the arms and the part that needed reproducing we set to figuring the best way to accomplish his request. It soon became apparent that just engraving the crook was not going to work as far as impact was concerned. So we came with the idea of carving the part on the front of the crook, just above the nose.
A couple of trial carving later and we had what we wanted, a three dimesional carving of a mortar and feather. The trick was to translate the two dimensional print we had into a 3D carving.
The crook was carved in Black Walnut with a buffalo horn collar engraved with a nod at some Celtic Knot work. The whole is to be mounted on a nice crabapple which unfortunatley I still waiting for. The only crab apple I have is just not up tp the job for this stick. So as soon as it is finished photos will be posted on the website.
Rarely do I have two customers eyeing the same stick or crook at the same time and attempting to buy it. However this is just what happened this week. I had a Lady email asking if we could engrave a name on the latest two part stick, a nice burr oak crook shape with rams head and border collie carved on it.
While emails were twoing and froing the stick sold over night. But it had been paid for by Pay Pal and not a bank transfer as expected. Now a slight dilema, was I to engrave a name on a stick paid for by a unfamiliar name but a stick that I was expecting payment for overnight. Emails starting flying back and forth between myself and the original customer interested in the stick.Soon transpired that some one had beaten her to the draw.
Ok, the stick was needed for a fast approaching birthday (lucky chap) and the customer was down a present. what to do?. I offered the lady an altenative stick, a yew wood crook with carved border collie. A vey nice stick on a stripped ash shank. But the lady had set her heart on having a rams head and border collie stick.
The only thing to do to save the customers disappointment was to offer to make another crook with the same style head, burr oak with carved rams head and border collie, but on a hazel shank to speed production. This she aggreed to and so work started immediately. I amazed how quickly I managed to have the head carved, I did work more hours than my old wanted to but it paid dividens. Both the head and shank are being varnished at the moment and we hope to glue up tomorrow if all goes well.The style of the head goes back to a first class stick maker now long gone, Haydn Wood carved these in rams horn, and a lovely job he did. I have tried to copy his style in the past but now find that while using the crook shape prefer to carve the rams head and bc in my own style. Its taken me three sticks to get to this stage with this style of crook head, but I think I have found my feet on this once. There was a time when I would have never attemtped anything like this but I am pleased to say the learning curve is positive.
Thats it for now. Pics of this stick to follow soon. If you have managed to get this far in this latest blog thanks for reading it and sticking with it. No pun intended.