Hi everyone,
I hope you all had a good Saturday! We were fixing our antenna, and while we were in Ace Hardware, I noticed they had hardwood dowels.
I've been wanting to make a wooden crochet hook myself just to see if I can and also how I like using one I made, so I got 2 dowels, 1/4 inch red oak and 5/16 white oak.
I started with the smaller 1/4 inch, and it took me an hour--hand sawed a 6 inch length, and then made the flat hand holds with my pocket knife, and then I used the Dremel to cut the basic hook head, and then the rest of the hour was spent using sandpaper and an emery board to smooth it out. It could use more sanding, as the head was too long at first, so I had to remodel the head after trying it out, but now I have a handmade red oak hook. I used DH's digital calipers and measured it, and it's 6.23 mm, pretty much right in between a US J and K hook size.
I didn't have any wax paper to help polish it (read about that online), but I did have a piece of paraffin candle I use to grease up my Bond knitting machine, so I put some of that on and rubbed it in after sanding. I could have used the linseed oil I polish our oak furniture with, but then it would have had to soak in/dry before I could try it out! I may use the linseed after the next sanding to refine the remodeled head.
Hook works nicely for being a little rough, as the wax insured it didn't catch on the yarn. I modeled its shape on a size K Susan Bates hook I took outside with me for reference.
Next, I'm going to take the 5/16 which is 7.93 mm right now and sand it down to make a 7 mm and a 7.5 mm, since my hooks jump from K/6.5 mm to L/8 mm, to give me more gauge possibilities when working with bulky yarn.
Leah