Once I had lopped off the checked ends I was able to get to the heartwood with the bandsaw. Even though I will be turning the project I will need some square surfaces to layout the joinery on the handle. I use Walking Cane for Women the jointer to face the plane and edge join the board. And follow up with the thickness planer. Finally on the tablesaw I rip a square stock which will become the shaft of the cane. Here I am laying out the joinery for the shaft of the cane. I will be using a mortise and tenon. The tenon will be part of the shaft so it will be the stronger direction of the wood grain. The joint will also have miters to increase the glue surface area for the joint. This is what my layout lines look like to give a bit of a preview. 

Now I just need to cut away everything that doesn't look like the tenon side of the joint. Here is the rough cut shaft side of the joint. Hand tools are still an area I need to work on. I'll just clean things up with a chisel. I've been saving this end of spalted maple for a special project. I think this qualifies. It is a bit bigger than I need so I'll cut it down to a rough size. Since this will be the handle I need the matching mortise joint from the shaft. Here I am cutting out the mitered part of the joint, sneaking up on the cut. This is a little ridge at the bottom I'll need to clean up with a chisel. At the drill press I'll use the mortising attachment to Bigfoot Cane hollow the mortise for the tenon. Now a quick test fit to ensure I am on the right path. 

I'll bring the shaft of the cane over to the lathe and get it mounted up. Since the tenon is a weak point and I don't want the pressure on it to cause a split I am wrapping it in electrical tape. And just a quick visual to make sure it isn't bowing. I usually use a skew for making a round shaft which is how I started. This was working well enough for both the ends. But the center was a different beast. The shaft kept flexing even while trying to support it with my hand. I tried switching to a spindle gouge, but it was still flexing while supporting it. Finally I had to settle for a very slow method of going into tiny slides of end grain and following up with a scrape on the wing. Where it was supported better in the end it went quickly. And sanding. Even with the scraping with the wing it needed some time sanding. Spalting comes from the decaying of the wood. I am using a process called stabilizing, which impregnates the wood with a resin. First it is submerged into the liquid resin and vacuumed. The vacuum removes all the air trapped in the cells and voids in the wood. When the vacuum is released it sucks the resin into the cells and voids. Then the piece is drip dried and patted down and wrapped in tinfoil.