I saw a picture of one of these hanging on British Red's knife lanyard and thought "I can make that!" It's a pretty simple project and can be easily completed in one sitting without any special tools. I only thought of making a how to as I was finishing up, but if you've done any carving at all it's pretty self explanatory...
The first step is to bore the hole in the stock - use a piece of wood that is of appropriate diameter, but several inches long to give you a good handle while you are carving - drill deep and you can get several beads out of one stick. This is kiln dried cherry wood which is a nice color and fairly easy to carve something small like this. I have made these down to about 3/8 inch diameter and up to the size of this one. Obviously there are many shapes of acorns that you can emulate.
Round off the acorn cap and start the nut by making a stop cut around the circumference, and cutting up to the stop. I filed the cross hatch texture of the acorn cap with the corner of a small file - a triangle file might be better, but I just used a rectangular one that I had at hand - I need more practice on this part for sure.
Refine the shape of the nut, and continue carving in toward the bottom until you free it from the stock.
Once you've cut the nut free you can wedge it onto a dowel like this so that you can easily finish carving the bottom. Sand or finish as you choose. Nice little hand made Christmas stocking stuffer, lanyard bead, zipper pull, etc. I did this one at the kitchen table while the better half was crocheting and we were all (Grandkids) watching a bit of TV. If anyone is interested and would like to have a few more steps included I will gladly do another and take more pictures.
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