Originally published in 1998 by The Guild of Master Craftsmen.

This ultimate, comprehensive guide explains how to make a wide range of traditional walking sticks, market sticks and crooks. Includes sourcing and seasoning wood, adapting material, shaping handles, fitting collars, decorating, and finishing.

Divulging its secrets in a structured way, so that you become more skilled as you learn, this book also allows those with a selective interest to dive headlong into a particular project. There is a fabulous range to choose from, including simple, one-piece walking sticks, rams horn crooks to even fancier designs. A complete introduction that contains everything you ever wanted to know about stickmaking.

To most of us, learning something "the hard way" implies wasted time and effort. Good teaching, we believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concrete techniques for becoming more productive learners. Memory plays a central role in our ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks, such as applying knowledge to problems never before encountered and drawing inferences from facts already known. New insights into how memory is encoded, consolidated, and later retrieved have led to a better understanding of how we learn. Grappling with the impediments that make learning challenging leads both to more complex mastery and better retention of what was learned. Many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive. Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming, and single-minded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly. More complex and durable learning come from self-testing, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another. Speaking most urgently to students, teachers, trainers, and athletes, Make It Stick will appeal to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and self-improvement.

Sticks are essentially practical aides but are also works of art that often become integral to the owner. They have to be strong and reliable, but are beautiful too. This essential book covers all these qualities - it explains the traditional principles and methods of stickmaking, but also celebrates the designs and ideas behind these creations. Written by an award-winning stickmaker, it provides a full acount of this age-old craft. Topics covered include materials, equipment and tools required to make a variety of sticks from timber, antler and horn; stick types and shapes; preparing timber to make handles and shanks; straightening shanks; making joints and exhibiting and competing. This new book will be an inspiration for all stickmakers, both new and old and will be of great interest to countryside enthusiasts, shepherds, farmers, woodworkers and working dogs owners. Superbly illustrated with 349 colour photographs.

This handbook based on the 2007 revised edition will also become an essential guide for those interested in learning the processes and techniques involved with the manufacture of a range of traditional sticks, outlining the processes in a clear, straightforward manner and using a wealth of diagrams and photographs. It also contains valuable, up-to-date information on where to source the raw materials for stickmaking, how to find, cut and season wood and where to locate materials such as ram and buffalo horn. This book is equally accessible to stick enthusiasts, amateur craftsmen and experianced professionals alike.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to make your ideas stick. “Anyone interested in influencing others—to buy, to vote, to learn, to diet, to give to charity or to start a revolution—can learn from this book.”—The Washington Post Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists—struggle to make them “stick.” In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits. Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas—and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.