SPOON # 19 - Sunday 12th May

I've ended up doing something very different this week - something not really me, but I don't actually mind it too much.

I set out in the rain this afternoon in the hope of finding a branch that might offer me some good carving and maybe an interesting spoon or two. After a couple of hours scouring the woods, however, I came home empty handed (except for an old fence post that I found moss-covered in the undergrowth and thought I might be able to use on my summer project - a little summer house).

So, without any new wood to carve, I got my wedges out and set about splitting a chunck of very twisted and gnarly lilac. Having created some very irregular and odd shaped (and very fragrant)sections of lilac, I decided to try something I've really not done for a couple of years - to carve an irregular shaped spoon, the shape of which was dictated by the natural shape and grain of the wood. And this serving spoon is what I ended up with:

A look at some of the lovely purple grain pattern

A very 'organic' profile - despite how it looks, it feels surprisingly good in hand

More curly grain...

...and still more.

The spoon is still fairly green, and I've had some disasters with lilac as it dries and splits along the grain of the purple heart wood, so I'll wrap it in paper for a month or so to let it dry slowly and then perhaps I'll add some detail to the handle and maybe a little carved decoration.

And on a different note - I was up in the loft this week looking for some lost paperwork, and found this spoon in a box of old keepsakes. Whilst this is not the first spoon I ever carved (my first was a tiny love spoon a friend helped me carve from a piece of silver for a girlfriend when I was 16) it was the first wooden spoon that I ever attempted. It was done whilst I was a student working on an American summer camp in New York when I was in my early twenties. I made it during my free time over a couple of days with a blunt craft knife (hence the rather ragged bowl) and when finished I had sent it home to my then girlfriend, who is now my wife. It just shows that I have had this fascination with carving spoons for some years now.

SPOON # 18 - Saturday 4th May

A couple of new spoons for a new month. These eating spoons are based on a design I saw at Spoonfest last year - a really nice little spoon by Barn Carder. I've made a couple before but not been entirely happy with the shape so thought I'd try again.

Two spoons; two varieties of wood and two very different experiences.

The larger of the spoons, the one on the right, is green apple. Easy to carve but wet and now needs a couple of weeks of drying out before finishing (the sides on the bulb of the handle need straightening - they're too curved for my liking at the moment) and oiling. It looks very blonde at the moment but should take on some nice colour with age.

The spoon on the left is probably the hardest spoon I've ever done. Before I discovered a bag of green off-cuts in the garage (hence the green apple wood) I carved the smaller one from the nicest bit of fire wood I had on the log pile - a bent piece of seasoned ash. And boy was it hard work. My thumb feels like it's been tenderised with a meat mallet. Having said that, it carved so clean - no tear-out and no real need for finishing (unless I decide to sand it).

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.