In this series of videos, I am attempting to make a lost artefact, a walking stick made from playing cards purportedly made by my great grandfather. In the first video I introduced the characters which make up part of this family mythology, and in the previous video, I unboxed and setup a manual die cutting press, designed a cutting and creasing former that I had fabricated, and made a jig for holding playing cards to be used with the former and press.
all essentially making these…
look like that…
so I could do that this them…
again, and again, and again…
Literally like a kebab.
In this, the thirds video, I will go about preparing the playing cards to make a sample, which I can sand to reveal the unusual colours and patterns created by this process.
When I made my first attempt at constructing the walking stick in 2010, I built a jig to compress the cards. This consisted of two blocks of wood faced with 6mm aluminium. Those had a slot from the top for the metal rod holding the cards to be dropped down into. The clamps two ends were connected with four thick threaded rods, and wing nuts that I could rotate to bring the clamping faces together – applying pressure. It was fairly successful, but I had problems with the handle – which over a decade of storage, and a couple exhibition has begun to crack.
I don’t fully understand how the original was compressed. Kyriacos only had a small blacksmithing workshop, with the bare essential of smithing tools – an oxy acetylene torch, hammers, an anvil, and an old-style vice. There are no photos of the inside of his workshop and maybe one or two from the outside.
My late grandmother thought he made his by compressing small section of cards at a time, using the vice. These sections must have only been as wide as the vice’s jaws could reach, and possibly after making several sections, those were joined together. But with what glue, we have no idea.
She though he just used water and later lacquered the finished object, but a similar attempt back in 2010 did not work for me.
For this sample I’ll be using a core made from 6mm bright steel. And after soaking the playing cards until they were visibly sodden, I diluted some wood glue with clean water, dipping the cards in as if I was about to make tempura, and skewering them onto the metal rod. It’s a very messy process.
I could now placed the sample between an impromptu press made up from a few bits of MDF with a hole drill out of each piece for the central metal rod, and some clamps, which I left to dry for a month.
This clamping device is something I’ll need to think about more carefully, and I suspect will be the subject of a later video.
This is the sample, which you can see fully cured. When I made the previous version I used a block plane, rasps, and files to shape the material, which as you can imagine, took some time to complete. This time I have access to the ultimate retirement tool – a wood lathe. One end of the block is secured tightly into a self-centring chuck, with the other end pushed onto a dowel which has had a 6mm hole drilled through the centre, on the lathe itself. That opening goes through the entire dowel block and is pushed onto a revolving live centre on the tail stock, which is tightened ever so slightly with the handwheel. I then adjusted the tool rest up to position, so the cutting edge of the tool was in line with the centre of the sample.
I went between a gouge and a scraper chisel to remove most of the material, and finished with some sandpaper which cleaned up the surface nicely.
I think I used floor varnish for the previous version, which after a decade has yellowed, but this time I’ll have a go with clear satin Osmo oil. I shook the tin well, and applied a generous layer to the sample, which you can see soaking in.
There are some gaps between the layers where I hadn’t applied enough clamping pressure – but after a few applications of osmo and light sanding between those applications, there seems to be a nice finish. I probably could use the sanding process to produce some dust, which I could size into the gaps as well.
I’m going to leave the video here but when I return, whenever that’ll be, and it might be a while, I’ll have hopefully come up with a design for a new and robust clamping jig. The lathe does make creating the cylindrical shape easier, but I don’t think I can turn a walking stick with a hooked handle. I’ll have to decide whether to make a longer piece and bend the handle or make the section in parts which I would somehow join later. Anyway, thanks again for watching, please let me know your thoughts in the comments and don’t forget to sacrifice a thumb to the pesky algorithm gods – they are really punishing me at the moment.
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