Bark Removal
Most of the branches I use have some little nubs from where smaller shoots and leaves used to grow so I usually sand them down with my Dremel tool. The brown bark of the willow peels away pretty easily and reveals the lighter inner layers.
For this project I used my pocket knife and my Dremel tool to remove the bark. The next few images will be a comparison of the results of each tool. Here, I used a sanding bit with the Dremel (the paper grit is somewhere between 200 and 300) and it shredded the bark as opposed to scrapping it off if you used a piece of sandpaper by hand. This is expected because the Dremel can spin anywhere from 5000 to 35000 RPM (at least my model can). This makes a big mess and I am usually covered in sawdust that looks more like fur because of the shredding.
These next few images are when I used my pocket knife to peel off the bark and get to the inner layers. It strips the wood away and leaves a clean streak behind but caution must be used because if I push too hard I can accidentally lop off a chunk of the wood and leave a big gouge behind.
Another thing to watch out for is the angle of the blade when it is peeling the wood. I have to keep the blade horizontal as much as possible when peeling because if the blade tilts too much vertically it will get stuck in the wood and make these little notches as you can see in the above image. This leaves a flange of wood which will need to be sanded off later.