Pinchy's Shell Cane Tutorial

This cane was inspired by a set of rub-ons I found in a Michael's Craft Store.

I have a batch of Kato Clay in in 3 ounce blocks so decided to use them.

You will need:

Kato 3 oz blocks in violet, white, pearl, turquoise.
Full blocks of the pearl and white, 1/4 block of the violet and 1/8 block of the turquoise)

A pasta machine for the blend and a blade to trim your cane.

There are sites on how to make a skinner blend/fold so I won't be showing how to do that.

Cut the white and pearl block into 3 equal pieces each. Mix 1 slab of white and pearl with the violet.

Mix the white and pearl of the next set together and repeat with the last set. This will give you a sheet of violet /pearl and 2 sheets of white/pearl.



Cut off a small piece of each white/pearl. About 1 ½ inches each.

This will be mixed with the turquoise.

You now have a sheet of turquoise/pearl, white/pearl and violet/pearl.

Take the violet/pearl; and the white pearl and make a skinner blend but do not roll. You will fold in accordion pleats from light to dark.

Carefully smash this graduated color slab to make it a little taller and work our some of the air that may have become trapped.

This is blurry but you take the turquoise/pearl and cut pieces that are as high as your cane and in various lengths. Slightly smash one end to make a tip. This will make sense in the next step.



You then make cuts with your blade in the skinner blend slab and insert the turquoise/pearl pieces. These should be different lengths to look more natural.

This is what it looks like after all the pieces have been inserted.

Slightly stretch the top/violet part to eliminate the curve. You will notice the turquoise sticking out of the bottom. This will be fixed in the next step.

Take your blade and slice a thin slice of the bottom to even up the white/turquoise stripes.

Now carefully press on one end to the other to taper one end gradually into a point.
Also round the larger end by pressing in slightly on the top and bottom corners.

Turn your piece over and start to tuck and roll the cane. Only roll just the tip at first. You will now need a long strip of black on #5 setting to be placed on the white/turquoise piece that is facing up. I forgot to take a picture of the black but you can see it in the next picture.

Now you can see the cane slab rolled with the black inserted. I have also taken the outside end at the top of the picture and shaped it to a slight point and added an thin sheet of the violet/pearl to cover the white.

Now it's time to fill in the spaces with white/pearl sheets and cover the outside of the cane.

I then added a sheet of the violet/pearl mix to the outside since I had some left.

This is a slice through the middle of my finished cane.

Here is the picture and a scanned picture of the finished cane.