SPOON # 38 - Saturday 28th September

This spoon is a bit of a cheat, I guess, since I didn't actually carve it this week. That is to say, I carved some of it this week, but had actually started it back in April. It's sycamore heart-wood, hence the lovely grain colouration (it's practically purple), and when I posted about this spoon back in April it was to complain about how it had split - look closely at the bowl and you can see the splits.

Anyway, I kept the spoon and over the months, as it dried out, the splits closed up so I thought I'd see if I could finish it off, and here are the results.

I'm kind of glad I didn't throw it on the fire pile now.
Julian is right, this isn't sycamore at all - far too colourful - but some lilac he gave me ages ago. When it was green it carved beautifully but was so wet that it dried too quickly and split each time. I guess next time I get some lilac I'll know to leave it a few months to stabilized a bit.

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.

SPOON # 36 - Saturday 7th Sept

I am pleased to say that I succeeded in carving a laddle from the wood my neighbour gave me a few weeks ago. If you look back about four posts, I mentioned this wood, saying how frustrated I had been that every time a tried to carve it, it split at the spot where the bowl meets the handle. Well, I started this particular spoon around the same time, but when the first crack began to show, I wrapped it news paper and left it in the garage for three weeks. When I got it out last week and decided to try and finish it off I was pleased to find that it had stabilized and, despite now being much harder, I could finish it off and keep it in tact - no more splitting.

It's not quite finished. A few fine cuts and a bit of sanding I think, but I'm really pleased with it over all - a nice simple laddle from a crook.

You can see on the right side of the handle where a little knot fell out, but I quite like it - it adds a bit of character.

SPOON # 35 - Saturday 31 August

I should begin with an apology. It has been weeks since I posted anything on this blog and I am doing these next few posthumously. At the end of August I started a new job as Assistant Head at a special school for children from aged 4 to 19 with physical and mental disabilities, and to say it has been a bit of a challenge, a steep learning curve or a baptism of fire would all be grossly understating the way I have felt over the past three weeks or so. Which brings me to the point of my preamble - I have not had time for carving, nor blogging, and don't realistically see that changing any time soon - at least for the next month or so, but possibly right up till Christmas. So, it is with regret that I am going to have to graciously bow out of my initial 52 weeks challenge of producing a spoon a week for a year. I will try, and when I do manage to carve, I will post and until then I am going to hand the reigns over to my brother Julian who will post one of his spoons each week instead - until I am up and running again.

In the mean time, here is a spoon that I carved a few weeks ago. It was tough going as it was from a piece of well-seasoned ash, which as you will know is one of the strongest and hardest woods. It was a small piece I came across on my wood pile, waiting to be burnt, and couldn't really bring myself to throw it on the fire as it is what I think is called jigged, or fiddled - meaning the tree it came from grew under some kind of stress and instead of having straight lines of grain, it has crinckled, zig-zagged grain instead. It is absoulutely beautiful and I used some before, when it was green and plentiful. Now I have run out of that particular wood, I thought I would rather struggle through carving some seasoned wood than simply watch it burn. It has a wonderful striped effect when you look across the grain and is zig-zagged when viewed straight-on. The close up photo of the end of the handle will show this lovely pattern, I hope.

Sorry - this is an absolutely awful shot of the side of my spoon - it looks more like a golf club than a spoon - trust me when I say it actually looks a lot better than this!

And nothing to do with spoons, but my song of the week, which I can't get out of my head and keep listening to over and over again, is a cracker by Grizzly Bear, called 'Two Weeks'. You might recognise it from the Youview advert currently on TV, but it is from their album which I was given a couple of years ago, but never really got into. I love it - hope it makes you smile as much as it does me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjecYugTbIQ

SPOON # 34 - Saturday 24th August

I was determined this weekend to make a laddle or deep serving spoon using the crooks I had cut from a small tree my neighbour had cut down and given me. It didn't go too much to plan - two attempts and both split, both in the same place. The second was not as bad as the first, so I have wrapped it and put it away in the hope that it will dry out slowly and I can then finish it off another time.

Instead I made this spoon, which showed signs of splitting along the handle into the bowl, but seems ok now - fingers crossed.

SPOON # 33 - Satyrday 17th August

This weekend I was running a youth camp for boys aged 12-18 for church. In the past I have done some whittling and carving with the boys, but this year there were too many and I didn't feel I could have proper control, knowing what boys are like once you give them an axe or sharp knike. Instead I decided to make what I have always called French Darts - though I'm not sure why as an internet search returned only information about skirt pleats and a game with a beer bottle on a pole and a frisbee. My version, taught to me by my big brother Adrian when I was much younger, is basically a long, thin hazel spear, fitted with a flight made from the plastic of a pepsi bottle, then thrown with the assistence of either a length of knotted string or an atlatl - a short hooked stick.


If you're interested to see how this kind of thing works, have a look here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TJW-qSOa9g

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I handed out knives to all the adults (this was my safety precaution) in order to split the ends of the spears, in order to insert the flight, with the strict instruction that you never cut towards yourself. Next thing I know one of my friends, Chris, has cut himself at the top of his thumb, there is arterial spray over his legs and face and no sooner have I bound it than blood is soaking back through the wadding and bandage that I am using. I only mention this in order to remind myself and anyone else who might be reading that the tools we use are intentionally sharp and when used carelessly or incorrectly dangerous. Chris went back to hospital three times and was eventually operated on to mend the nicked tendon and the cut artery.

I took a turned bowl, beaker and spoon with me to eat my meals at camp and the boys and leaders were very interested to see how I carved a spoon so I made this one - not great because I didn't have a lot of time nore a proper chopping block, but it served the purpose of demonstration. It is sycamore.

 

Just spotted my Freudian slip-up in the title - it's not the day I dance around with Pan's People, nor do I have goats legs and little horns! 

SPOON # 32 - Sunday 8th August

I think this spoon is made from sycamore - it was a piece of wood Julian gave me and I think that's what he said it was. I had tried to split it some weeks ago but it was so twisted once it began to split, that the two wedges I was using simply stuck in the wood and as I had been in a bit of a rush at the time, I am ashamed to say that I simply left it like that, with the wedges still stuck in it, under the garden table in order to stop the wedges from rusting should it rain, and there it sat for a couple of weeks.

Yesterday, however, when I was mooching around for a piece of wood, I noticed this half split limb and saw that the wood that had been exposed had darkened up quite nicely so thought I should finish the job I had started weeks ago and get enough wood to make a spoon. I had already decided that I would only make a small eating spoon so knew I wouldn't need a lot. And here it is.

I started by taking my photos out of doors but it was sunny and with it being fairly light coloured wood, the photos were pretty much burned out and you couldn't really see the detail of the spoon, and bearing in mind my recent promise to give better photos, I scrapped those and took some more in-doors.

As you can see, compared to my frosts knife, the spoon is only the size of an average tea spoon. I am hoping it will darken as the air acts upong the newly carved surfaces.

I really quite like the reverse sweep at the top end of the handle - it makes the spoon more tactile and adds a further dimension to the overall shape. You will notice also that I have not over cranked the spoon, which is a real temptation for me as I love the look of cranked spoons but often end up with something more like a laddle which is not really condusive to eating with.