Crooked Broom

There are a couple of design issues that occur in an 80 year old house. One of them is that there are no open spaces. The other is that of the 7 closets in the house, 6 of them are located upstairs. And because I have tile and hardwood floors, I like to keep brooms around to pick up the dust, hair, dirt, and other nubbins the cats bat around the floor. Only I’m not leaving some generic, ugly broom laying around my brand new kitchen.Which was the inspiration behind this idea…

Crooked Broom- Rough Cut

Hey, wow, there are my feet. That looks ridiculous. If you can ignore my freakishly long second toe you’ll see that this is the first rough cut. I just started with a  standard 2 x 4 and my portable jigsaw. Then refined that down by using the angle-cut feature of the 3-position saw.  Whether I’m carving in wax or wood I find it easier to cut the corners off before I start “hand” carving if I’m going for a round shape.

Crooked broom - Rough 2

This is the point where A.) People stopped looking at me weird when I told them I was carving a crooked broom handle out of a 2 x 4, and B.) The mosquitoes got so damn bad I had to set up shop (and by “set” I mean “rig”) in the basement.

crooked broom- carving 1

For all of this carving I use a roto-zip bit in my Dremmel (that has a $20 flex-shaft extension) to just kind of shave off a little bit of wood at a time. I do have a bunch of fancy bits that come in handy more when I am carving in to something (such as the swirl at the top) as opposed to just smoothing something down.

This is what it looks like as an actual broom:

Broom Sanded 2

And, as a finished one:

Finished2

Finished Swirl

Blue stripes to go perfectly with the blue tile in my kitchen. Now this is something I don’t mind leaving leaning against a wall in the kitchen.

11 Responses

  1. I love your broom!

    How did you attach the sweeping part to the handle? Lord knows I don’t need another project – but this one rocks!

    (love the desk, too!)
    y.

  2. I would love for you to be more specific in how you attached the broom straw TO the handle itself…did you buy it separate or get it from another broom ? I know they sound like stupid questions but I had to ask them… ;o))) Thanks !

    1. I drilled a hole in the bottom of the handle I made (2-3″ deep), then cut the original handle off the broom at that length and glued it in to the crooked handle. That part works okay, but I’ve found a carved pine handle is only good for moderate use.

      1. The cyberneticists have a saying, "It takes variety to control variety." By "variety," they mean the number of states that a system can take on. Put in longer terms, a control system must be able to take on as many states as can the system to be controlled. Otherwise the system to be controlled can get into states the controlling system cannot reach. I think this cybernetic axiom exemplifies the point you're trying to make.

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