SPOON # 49 - Sunday 15th December

Here is another little laurel eating spoon - the last of my laurel. A simple design with a bit of kolrosing - in the new year I'd really like to do a lot more kolrosing. I've always been a fan of scrimshaw and fancy myself a bit of a scrimshander, even though I've never actually done any. Come to think of it, I quite fancy a go at shotgun engraving too. When I was about 17 I used to work with a bloke, Uncle Chris, who had been a jewellery engraver in a previous life and he'd let me use his graving tools and took me to Birmingham jewellery quarter to buy a small quantity of silver which I carved into a love spoon pendant for my girlfriend- come to think of it, that was the first spoon I ever made.

This is a very simple pattern, I began with the intention of having another go at basket weave pattern, but soon realised I'd got the angles on the transecting lines wrong so went with this simple criss-cross instead.

I rubbed the kolrosing with charcoal - I'm sure I've read that this is a traditional method - and it worked fairly well. It looked like a dirty smudge at first, but after a rub down with walnut oil it looked okay.