hi,
just wonderinbg how i could seal my walking stick-i have a nice piece of ash which i have left to dry in a warm room at work-i will bore a hole in the top but DON'T know to seal it when the survival gear has been placed in it-any ideas, i will bodge, make and faff on-that is part of the fun BUT i'm strugglling on this one!

Cheers

Mark

Mark - A wine bottle cork or a rubber stopper of appropriate size and further secured with a suitable type of adhesive tape...?

Or what about a thin walled container inside the bored hole?

Give us some dimensions and the ideas will spring forth... Outside diameter, inside diameter, depth of recess - that sort of thing. Also some idea of the tools/skills readily available to you.

Assume that you will at least seal the exterior of the entire stave with a couple of coats of polyurethane or tung oil or something and that you will at least put some sort of ferrule on the tip to increase wear resistance...

Regards,

Tom

Much apprecaieted-i've stashed the stick so when i go in today i will be able give more details- the stick is approximatley 4foot long when it is finshed,

i will bore a hole in the bottom about 1 inch deep and bung that with liquid rubber.

I hope to do the usual thing with paarcord around the handle, maybe a bin liner underneath it,like the ranger rick one!

I have a vast range of tools, my brother works for Drapper-a leading DIY tools sales company over here, tools are then ALSO readily available from a Woodland Park i volunteer for on a sunday-the tools here are more woodland based bodging tools, i also have access to machinery at my dads workshop at home.

I intend to do mbasic carving on th stick also down to a 2-3mm depth!

I will be treating the stick initially with linseead oil, then with a polyurethane.

Other dimensions will come in the next 24 hours!!!!

hope this helps

Mark

Mark,

I can think in SI measurements so no need to convert to inches/feet - use whichever is most convenient for you.

sorry but i learned both as a child so to be awkward i use the most convenient at the time-useually feet/yards for long things, inches for shorter things, then go to millimetres for really small things-sounds wierd but easiest for me personally!

The stick is about an inch and a half thich and intend to bore a hole just under an inch thick in the top.

The stick is about 6foot high but i intend to use about 4-5foot of that(personal preference)

Mark

...and the depth of the bored hole? If you intend to bore it more than about 3 inches deep, I'm leaning towards an epoxied sleeve inside - the residual wall thickness of the stave will only be about 4mm. There are many alternatives... something effective and simple is easy to come up with. Let me know the anticipated depth of the hole.

yeah about three to fuor inches-depper rather than shallower-apprently we have a brace and bit which i will use to cut the holes!!!

mark

Then my first suggestion is to just keep it simple - for example, purchase an inexpensive waterproof plastic match safe and fit it into the recess. Save a scrap of the stave that you cut off and whittle and sand it into a stoppper shaped somewhat like a champagne cork. If you want to get fancy with it, you could use a cut off screw or two thru the sides of the recess to act as a latch - the corresponding grooves in the stopper would resemble an inverted "L".

Personally, I'd probably spend too much time machining an aluminium alloy "cartridge" with threaded and o-ringed cap(s) to slip into a deeper hole etc etc.

If the dimensions otherwise suit you, in the USA a 2 AA Mini-Mag flashlight body and tailcap might be an inexpensive basis for a similar approach, although the body wall is a bit thicker than I would machine for myself. The "trick" to using a Min-Mag torch body will be figuring how to seal up the end that the reflector screws onto. It is NOT a common diameter-thread combination. What I suggest in this case is to reverse your paradigm: Remove the "head" of the torch and fashion a plug. The best approach for someone without an engine lathe would be to hand-file a scrap of aluminum to an easy fit (neither loose nor snug) and epoxy it in place. Better, use a small drill bit of suitable size and pin the plug with a steel pin or two (such as a shortened brad) in addition to the epoxy. Then simply use the tail cap of the torch as the lid to the container.

2 AA Mini-mags are typically available for under $8.00 US and many folks who regularly use them (like my family) usually have one or two around that have become "parts stores" due to long-forgotten batteries... you may be able to scrounge one for nothing and salvage it into what I described above.

OR - if you are a little clever and a little patient you could even conceal a small torch like a Mini-Mag in the top of your stave, complete with a decorative/protective matching wooden tophat.

I meant this note to be descriptive rather than prescriptive as you seem to be a clever and and resourceful fellow - hope this seeds some fruitful idea for you. If not, sally forth and we'll stir up some more ideas. I'm a bit hampered by my narrow scope of the sort of common hardware one finds in your neck of the woods - I communicate with some fellow hobbiests of the sort you term "model engineers" in your country, but we usually don't get into ordinary hardware comparisons.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Tom

Thanmks, thats one to sleep on-you have really got my head thinking on this one!!!! I like the idea of an aluminium cap-i'll look into that one!!!

Thanks again
Mark

PS when i decide i'll tell you, and whjen it's finished, it will take months i'll post pics!!!