I looked at the blueprint for the hairsticks with the rose pattern top today. As I looked at the picture from the top, I had an idea. What if you brought the bottom segment of the rose to a careful welding heat, and welded the bottom of the rose to the stick itself. Or, if welding wouldn't work, or would be too difficult, just bend the bottom section down into the stick. This would make the rose cup a little at the bottom.

BP0119 Rose Hair Stick





From the illistrations this is already all one piece of matal. You could heat the base of the rose a bit and depress the stem into the flower if you wanted. You could even work the rose to be a little more realistic by using the Russian rose pattern as Josh mentioned.

Josh just handed us the cat, the rest is up to the individual smith to get it skinned - his way.

How would you improve on the design? If you have a different design for a hairstick, let me know and we can make it into a blueprint and start a series on hairsticks. Don't laugh, they sell. Give a lady with long hair one 3-4 choices of different designs for hairsticks, and she will most likely buy one just to get the hair off the back of her neck during the hot weather.

I did a pair of these out of copper -- BIG hit. Don't forget to texture the shafts.

Pardon my ignorance but how are these used? (My wife has relatively short hair so I have no point of reference).

Woolridge, ironically, my hair is even longer than my girlfriend's so I can describe the process pretty well.

1) Tie off hair with rubberband somewhere on the back of the head.

2) Grab the end and twist it til it starts to kink.

3) Roll it around its own base. Should form a nice cylinder... maybe.

4) Stick the sticks through it. I usually use a rubber band to hold it together -- works a little better, and I don't have any 'manly' hair sticks... yet.

If you're really curious about how this works you could probably nail a piece of braided nylon rope to a board and try it.

Hello,
Looks interesting, I'll have to make some. Anybody have a picture or link for one of these russian roses?

Thanks
Richard

T,

So, these are made from fairly small stock - like 1/4"?

Quote

Anybody have a picture or link for one of these russian roses?

 

From across the street:

Links removed at the request of Jock at anvilfire.

 

Hello,
Thanks for the link. I'll see what I can do now.

HWooldridge, The ones in the blueprint were made out of 1/8 inch stock. Anything bigger and the weight of the metal will start to pull on the hair!

I second the 1/8. 1/4", I could probably use, but not many other people could. And I wouldn't like the weight :)

Since this blueprint was made I have played with design a bit. Now my wife wears one rose stick and a stick with a rose leaf on the end. On the size dia. : For good sticks, 1/8" is about the smallest I could get and it's hard to work anything smaller, unless your FAST! :wink: If you've any more questions, just ask me! Email is [email protected].

I can get 3/16 square cold rolled locally and I also have some 1/8 square from when I used to make skewers - you are so right about it cooling fast!

Welding rod comes in small sizes, 1/16, 3/32. 1/8 etc. Just need to turn round to sq for maybe 6" length cause your going to mash the rest flat anyway.