SPOON # 17 - Monday 29th April

I didn't have a lot of time this weekend for spoon carving, so I had to plumb for something small and relatively simple. I had a nice piece of lilac with a little heart wood running through it so decided to have a go at a little eating spoon - not rocket science, nothing flash, just a simple working spoon. I call it my porridge spoon and I have tried it out and it feels pretty good in the mouth.

 

I cranked it about as much as you practically can



Unfortunately it's beginning to delaminate a bit on the heel of the bowl, due to the cranking - I'll try a little PVA and see if that won't hold it all together.

A little simple handle carving.

SPOON # 16 - Sunday 21st April

I thought I'd try something a little different this week. I nice piece of lilac heart wood and a design similar to one I found searching the internet for inspiration. The one I found was actually made from horn, but I liked the idea of kind of turning the handle so the thickness went in opposite to the conventional way. I think you can see what I mean:

Perhaps not very practical for using as a spoon, but quite ornate, I thought. Anyway, I wanted to try this with a spoon and this is what I ended up with:

Beautiful colours and grain pattern

It didn't turn out quite as well as I'd envisaged, the coil on the handle was really quite difficult. I would have liked it to look like a single, smooth, long cut, but I guess I'm just going to have to practise my knife skills to achieve that.

SPOON # 15 - Saturday 13th April

Having had such a disasterous couple of days of spoon carving last weekend, I thought I'd go back to carving ash this week - a wood I had moaned about of late but that I feel familiar and safe with.

This week's spoon is a simple eating spoon design - a design I've seen lots of other spoon carvers produce - not too difficult and fairly quick to carve, though in this case a little complicated by the dryness and consequent hardness of the particular piece I was using. I thought I'd do a little decorative carving - influenced, I think Dr Freud would have said, by my subconscious psyche.

Monday this week my wife took me to Slimming World in an attempt to help me reverse the growth of my expanding waist. I must say, it was a bit of a trip - something like a scene from Little Britain or The League of Gentlemen - but I was happy to do it if it meant me losing some weight.

Any way, having spent this week recording everything I've eaten, weighing, balancing, counting every element, I'm afraid I might be developing something of an unhealthy food obsession - one that has manifest itself in my spoon carving.

Subliminal desires!!

SPOON # 14 - Sunday 7th April

I've done quite a bit of carving this weekend, some quite ambitious, but things really haven't gone my way. So, I've got three spoons to present this week, all of which have been something of a disaster!

Spoon number one - a nice piece of apple. I thought this would make a lovely spoon, having as it does a bit of heart wood on the handle. Just as I'm getting toward the finishing stages of the spoon, I notice a dirty great split opening up along the length of the handle. Bah!

you can't see the crack very well, but believe me, it's there

Spoon number two - I came across this folding sporran spoon amongst the amazing collection belonging to Stuart King some time ago and thought, I've got to have a go.

I tried once, about a year ago, and got right to the end before realising I'd made a fundamental error which meant the spoon wouldn't actually fold. Then, when I came across this post on Lloy Kahn's blog,
http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/sculpted-wooden-spoons.html
I felt all inspired and thought, with a year's more carving experience under my belt, this would be an impressive doddole. So, with a nice piece of willow and a different, less intricate design, I set about making another. Just getting to the point where I need to start cleaning it up, and off breaks the hinge. Damn!

Spoon number three - and finally, knowing the weekend was fast coming to a close and I needed a spoon to post, I thought I'd have a go at the same design as the one above, but not folding. Again, it was a design I saw in Stuart King's collection and did one once before that I was really pleased with. I'd got a big chunk of lilac still, with some lovely purple heart wood, so thought I'd give it a whirl.

 

 

And would you believe it, the darn thing split! Drat!

Oh well, we live and learn. I'm hoping for better luck and results next week.

SPOON # 13 - 1st April 2013

This week's spoon is a bit of a cheat, in some ways, in that it's exactly the same as one I've done before - in fact, to be precise, it's exactly the same as five others that I've done before.

I'd mentioned some weeks ago that I wanted to do a set of six ash eating spoons and a rack to hang them on. Well, yesterday I did number six of the spoons and today knocked up the hanging rack.

The spoons, as I said are all ash and I think I'll give the bowls a bit of a rub down with sandpaper. The shelf was some wood that I split out and put in the shed to dry out about a year ago so can't actually remember what it is - looks like cedar, or something like that. I clamped it in my workmate and 'thicknessed' it with my newly sharpened No4 Stanley plane, which works like a dream. The little posts I carved from oak.

I put a bit of a chamfer on the edges of the rack just to make it a bit more interesting. When I get a little more time I wouldn't mind doing some chip carving on the back board.