User:Chris Boda/sandbox

A ghioagă ({{ {{respell|gee|wa|goh|}};,"dog wood") is a wooden walking stick and club or cudgel, typically made from a Cornelian Cherry sapling, Cornus mas stick with a large knob at the top. It is associated with Romania and History of Romania.

Other name variants include bâtă, măciucă, and băț.

Etymology
The name ghioagă is the Romanian for "stick" or "staff" and sometimes "club".

As an alternate etymology, have written that the name may have derived from the wood stick bâtă from Latin batt(u)alia or băț.

Construction
Ghioagă are traditionally made from Cornus mas (cornel) wood (‘’Cornelian cherry, European cornel'') or other hard wood timber.

Wood from the root was prized since this would be used for the knob, and was less prone to crack or break during use.

Curing and polishing
Most commonly, the chosen wood would be placed up on small fire to cure for a duration of couple of minutes. The stick may be smeared with lard before being curing, as a preparatory step. Ghioaga its typical white or creamy shiny appearance due lack of skin, bark is removed after curing it in fire. Any preparation would be finished with oils or sealants, etc. A further coat of special soot finish may be applied, and most of the Ghioage (plural) are also made with pyrography art on them.