Black Walnut Keychains

While living in VA transitional housing, I found a cache of black walnut shells. They were under a tree close to a food pantry in the same complex. I remembered where that tree was. After about 7 months of communal living, my caseworker found a wheelchair-accessible apartment. Lucky thing too because although I have prosthetic legs, I was in transitional housing after falling through a deck. I am still at least one operation away from being able to walk again.

I depended on that food pantry for the first food in my new apartment. While waiting for my monthly food gift, I visited that tree. The idea of collaborating with the squirrels, I gathered a bag of split and half-eaten black walnuts. I shaped them further with hand tools, dried them in the oven, and quasi-stabilized by soaking them in boiled linseed oil and beeswax. After curing, I turned this batch of 9 into keychains with bronze-finished hardware.

I finished this project in November of 2024. In total, I made 9.  I plan on making more, but they will be slightly different from this batch.