So I managed to pull off something a little bit incredible with this thing. For the handle, I grabbed a stick from off the ground for this, with the plan to hopefully strengthen it up by running a wire through it (a lofty goal, yes). So I brought it home, and tried drilling into an end, and like... the bark started to instantly peel off from the action. So ok, let's take care of the bark first and lock that on. I darkened it up with a strong tone paint wash, then covered the entire surface with a coat of wood glue for strength and protection.

Then, when it was like... an hour dry, I decided to take a swing at boring a hole all the way through, fully expecting to destroy the poor thing. I have a 1/16" drill bit that would make it like... *almost* halfway through, so I started twisting the bit with a hand drill, again fully expecting it to snap, or crack, or drill out the side and I'd need to start over. But drill I did, and on the first side, I made it the full depth of the bit, no side-exit. I went to the other side and repeated, again... got full bit depth, no cracking, perfect from the outside. Ok, ok... now it's really the questionable time. The 18 gauge wire just baaaarely fits into there, so with the glue dry but maleable and bendable, I drove the wire in, somehow managed to punch through the 1cm undrilled middle portion, not sure where the extra material went, the center pith was maybe soft enough to squish out of the way (the wire being pinched off to a wedge tip probably helped), but I just kept on going, grabbing and twisting that stick like I was being paid, holding the wire with pliers, and, miraculously, somehow... the wire emerged from the other side! I don't even, I can't even.

So, not looking this gift horse in the mouth, I clipped off the wire with like... 2 inches to spare, bent as tight of a loop onto the 'top' end as I could, used that same drill bit to drill THAT out to make it big enough for a chainmaille ring to go through, made a bit of a wedged slot in that end of the stick, and twist/pushed/pulled the wire through until that loop hole was juuuust outside the end of the stick.

Ok wow, I was NOT expecting to get this far, I don't know HOW I lucked out to have left the glue the perfect length of time to both not take my fingerprint indents AND be flexible enough to allow the wire to get through (I'm positive the stick got straighter through all this too, added bonus), push that pith out of the way, and not crack... just wow.

Ok, ok, so now with the loop on the business end being set, I clipped off the tail end with about a centimeter to spare, not sure if I'd clip it down further, and thought... ok, the butt end needs like... a spike or something. Do I just taper it off? Let's try some things. I took a little tiny piece of stick, stained it the same, drilled it, angle-cut it from a vague fat part down to the tip from four sides to square it to a point, stained it the same, and prepped a strip of bark the same way to glue overtop of the loop at the head. I also painted the metal black before this to hide it better, and the bottom tip was hit with like 5 layers of strong tone to mask the shiny and blend it into the wood (I'd debated whether to keep it metal-shiny or not, at least a bit for the 'oohh, scary' factor, but having it the same colour as the wood felt best), and... now what? The handle is too thin for Skulk's hand, I picked it specifically for that with plans of adding a grip to fit... let's do that now!

Now, let it be known that the seam between th main handle and the bottom spike stick piece was visible. I originally tried hiding it with a tiny thin strip of bark, but instead abandoned that to include an aesthetically pleasing loop of black string overtop to hide it, then wound it past that knot in the wood and wrapped the entire bottom half of the handle, putting a base of glue down before the string, so I can keep an uncoated string texture on the surface. We glue-coated the bottom stick piece finally, touching it to the lower side of the seam-hiding string just to keep that from coming loose somehow. We did the same with a tiiiiny thin bead of glue above the top loop of string, and with that... Skorr is done! Enjoy Skulk and Trancula, may it smite your evil foes well!