SPOON # 37 - Saturday 21st September

Yes, I know, I know - I was all 'woe is me' last week and saying I would never carve again, but as luck would have it, things have begun to fall into place a little at work over the past week and I found myself on Saturday night with an hour or so to do a bit of carving - and why shouldn't I?

So, here is this week's spoon. I used some more of that wood my neighbour gave me (the one I don't know the variety of). It had been sitting under the table in my back garden for best part of a month now and had turned a lovely orange colour as it oxydized, so I thought I'd try and capitalize on that colour.

I was hoping to use one of the crooks that I'd got left, but they all had either big knots right where my bowl would be, or else had cracked too far down where the handle would be, so I settled for this staight piece.

I know I've made this shape before - it's actually one of my stock spoon shapes, but I did try a couple of new things that in the end I was quite pleased with. Firstly, I put a sharp keel on the top of the handle. I think this looks quite nice, though it was hard to do as when you reach the highest point on the handle you are transitioning between grain in two different directions. This wasn't helped by the small knots just at that point and I did get a little tear-out, but ce la vie.

Quite a cranked profile and a nice, shallow bowl, for ease of eating.

Then, on the end of the handle, I made a kind of inverted cut to follow in converse the keel on the front - I hope that makes sense. It's a simple thing but it's fairly difficult to get the grain to all come together in a number of differentdirections.