You know the realpolitik --"speak softly, and carry a big stick" -- Well, I've got a shortened one.
This weighty piece of Painted Gum has a solid feel and balance in my hands. Just the thing to beat someone to death with.
Alan Jamison and I cut it from his bush land on the Downs. After ignoring it, I went to work on it yesterday: whittling & sanding then oiling it with my Cricket Bat Butter .
I am not a woodworker, but when it comes to sticks I'm exploring their potential grandeur ...and their life force.
While this stick may be representative of the sapling we cut -- post renovation, it performs so well in freestyle mode.
Freestyle stick work is improvised movement hither and yon twirling and striking in the air, swapping hands and jabbing so that it is in constant motion. Like shadow boxing -- but armed.
I am at a stage of stick work now where I do not have to fear I'll bonk myself. If I accidentally struck my noggin with this -- given the speed it moves & its weight -- I would do real cranial or maxillofacial damage.
I wanted shorter sticks for indoor work as ceilings and light fittings are constants. Practicing indoors during heavy weather is an option.
Longer sticks are improvised with but they take longer to get from A to B...Physics, gravity and such being what they are.
Painted Gum is also one of the heaviest Australian hardwoods. It's heavier than my recently renovated Blackbutt dowels. So when I bang! I bang big.
This stick has also taught me I can shift away from regulation sizes and customize. Different lengths have different attributes but weight and gauge also contribute to a stick's 'life force'. As does the material density with which it is grown.
So selecting your own sticks from the natural world is really 'the way of the stick'.
In a world ruled by industrialized gym equipment and precise gradations, embracing wood to move around with is another dynamic altogether.
