SPOONS # 45, 46, 47 - 17th November - 1st December

It's been a really busy few weeks, hence my ability to post any spoons recently. So, I am going to post three in one this week.

I can't honestly say I am very pleased with the three I have to show, for various reasons, but I put most of it down to lack of practise and I find myself in the surprising position of being nearly at the end of my 52 spoons project, by which time I thought I would be a consummate expert, only to find that the spoons I am making are not as good as many I had made previously. That's not to say it's all bad - I'm not even at the end of the project yet and I am considerably better than I was at the beginning and my understanding of the form and design of spoons has increased incredibly. What it tells me is that I can not expect to carve only a single spoon a week, giving it only an hour or so, with tools that I haven't taken the time to sharpen properly and wood that is way below a carvable standard, and still come out with something I am pleased with and proud of.

Any way, here are my three spoon, carved in the order from right to left.

The first one I carved was this little laurel spoon, which I actually don't mind that much.

It's quite a nice shape and colour. I quite like the effect of the knots in the wood, though it does make it hard to carve. I didn't originally mean the handle to be as curvy in profile as it ended up, but I had a spot where I was getting a lot of tear-out so had to carve it out. I used a hooked knife on the reverse of the spoon for the first time, too, meaning that the keel along the back of the handle is actually concave.

Then, last week, I carved this spoon (or should I say, began to carve it):

As you can see, this was from a natural crook and I'd hoped it would give me a lovely spoon. The wood is sycamore or rowan, I found it already cut in my local woods, so didn't know how old or dry it would be. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered it was very dry and fibrous and splintery and it did not carve very well at all. I left it, thinking I would come back to it to finish off once I had sharpened my knives, only to discover last night that it had two crack opening up on the bowl. Just as well really as I should have given up on it right from the first.

Yesterday's spoon is the worst. I only had a little laurel branch wood left, which didn't allow me sufficient width to do a proper crank on the spoon, so I did what I actually dislike immensely, and carved a flat spoon.

I don't know why, but I just don't like it. Oh well, now I know that for sure I'll be careful to avoid that in future (other than for cooking spoons, which work quite well straight).

So the hunt is on to find something a little better to se me through to the new year.