I went camping last night. Not far from home or anything, which is why I’m home again while the rest of the family enjoys the rest of their camping experience. I learned that fibromyalgia and a leaky air mattress are not good bedfellows.
Anyway, before the cold, sandy ground beneath the deflated air mattress seeped its icy tendrils into the very marrow of my bones, I used my camping time wisely:
I suppose now is the time that I should be like, “Okay, clearly I miss writing about vampires.” But I’m still in denial about that, and I don’t have time to write about vampires right now, anyway. So, let’s just say I did this for research. If you’re out there, writing a book about vampires or vampire hunters, you need to know stuff about how to make wooden stakes. It’s pretty straight forward; I started with a chunk of log that had been split, and then split again so it had a triangular wedge shape. Then I patiently and very slowly whittled one end down to a point. It’s actually quite sharp and probably could penetrate somebody’s breast bone if you put a lot of force behind it. So, I’m not sure if this counts as a deadly weapon. I probably wouldn’t drive around with it.
Then, at my cousin Tony’s urging, I whittled out three long, shallow scoops to use as a grip. Total time: about an hour and fifteen minutes.
So, there you go. If you’re writing a vampire book, or you’re just wondering how long it takes the Scoobies to make all those damn stakes, it takes an hour and fifteen minutes per stake, and you need to sharpen your knife between stakes.