Avery: This year we got a fantastic harvest of Sour Orange, also known as Seville Orange. The fruit itself tastes far more like a lemon, perhaps just a touch sweeter than a regular lemon. As you might imagine it is best used as a lemonade or used in some kind of desert or made into marmalade.

But, there is more to this tree than just the fruit it bares, early in the year we pruned the tree and cut out several large stalks from the base of the tree, one of these stalks I took and transformed into a walking stick. I don’t know if citrus trees are often used to make walking sticks but that didn’t matter, I saw a walking stick in that branch and so it would be.

I sketched out a design on the stick and used a dremel to carve out the image, I never used a dremel before so I didn’t really know what I was doing, with a bit more practice I probably could have created a much better design, but in the end I did some simple carving and relied on ink to make the design pop.

Before I started carving I had to strip the bark off the wood, this was a time consuming process, I used nothing but a basic razor blade for the job. Initially I used a pocket knife blade, but golly, the blade on the pocket knife was so stiff I couldn’t cut through the skin of the wood. The razor blade worked like butter thanks to the flexibility of it.

I coated the entire stick with wood stain, I don’t know how well wood stain works on wood like this, but hey, it stuck, and that’s good enough for me.

Once the design was complete, I wrapped the area where the hand is to grip the stick with some fabric and string.

And this completes the design! I don’t know how well this walking stick will endure in the years to come, but it was super fun project, and shows you that citrus trees can be good for more than just their fruit.