Making The Golf Tee Novelty
Greetings my artistic friend, I am proud to introduce the making of this Golf Tee or even the Nail novelty gift or merchandise, I saw this from Roy Underwood and one of his interesting shows.
I made of number of these and broke a number of rather expensive tools trying to make them, so be for warned of mostly the size of the tools needed.
One can probably use a number of wood materials but the 2"X 2" finished to about 1 1/2" bought at a wood store square pine stick is where I began. You measure out the proper dimensions and using a hand saw at first cut down the sections you want to remove, not all the way obviously. Then take a chisel as wide as possible to the section you want to remove and at the desired depth, and chop out the small chunk of wood, you'll do that 3 times for a total of 6 cuts and 3 chisel chop outs. Here is a pic w/a nail but simply imagine the nail not there and this is what you want to see.
From here you have stick one end in a glass of water and let it soak for at least 24 hours, now here is the tricky part, you take that end that is soaked and put it into a vice (and I've broke a couple of rather large vices before switching to a hydraulic press), and compress it until it is a bit past the half way point as seen here, let this sit
for at least 24 hours.
Now here is the trickiest part, Before drilling I notched with a ice pick
the center of the two sections needing to be drilled first, so I didn't have to quickly guess where the middle was during the operation. As seen here, do this before you soak the wood.
Now the wood is going to want to decompress slightly so I made a jig to hold the whole block tightly, then insert the block into it and drill a level hole the size of the nail or tee through the first section, then line up the second center and drill through that, pull out the drill bit and quickly insert the tee or nail before the wood has a chance to spring up and block the opening.
The wood will continue to spring up but it wont go all the way, you have to reinsert it into the water for a day for the wood to return back to its original position, and even then it wont go all the way, you have then take a block plain and shave off a couple millimeters of the 3 remaining columns to have them match the compressed one or the people might figure out how it was done.
No one has simply guessed the right way to do this although they believed 3 ways that it did not get done. It is a unique item, a wonderful conversation piece, and a great gift for the golf or novelty enthusiast. The coin in the block of wood is even more challenging to guess how to do, no one has correctly guessed it either.
Here is the sound of a 3" copper nail banging against the wood, almost the sound of a critter in the woods.
Enjoy this new found talent either once, or try to make a number of them, they do well @ $5 in most any location.
For those who might not want to make one but still get some, for a limited time they can be purchased here.