Why Doesn't Anyone Use Softwood?

Long ago I've read a few on-line manuals how to carve spoons. All of them agree on this: "Never use softwoods! They are too soft, they crack easily and your food will taste like resin!"
But then my colleague brought me a piece of larch and I carved a spoon from it because I'm a deep-dyed optimist.

Now I can say from my own experience that: 

• This wood is not too soft for carving. Some people carve spoons from willow, which is even softer.
• Does it crack? Maybe. I'll find out later.
• The resinous smell is very weak after drying and the taste is neutral.
• And besides (who would say that?) it can be easily sanded without leaving a fuzzy surface after washing.

Look at those colors! And the grain pattern! The best thing about it is that larch will acquire even better color in the future.

Treacherous Almond Wood

I thought I've already experienced all the dirty tricks that wood can prepare for me. I saw knots, irregular and wavy grain, soft punky wood and woodworm holes. But almond prepared a big surprise for me. Note the small hole in the upper part...

At first I thought it was a pulp or some rotten wood, later it seemed like a hole bitten by some mysterious insects. Anyway, the hole branched and it went diagonally to the other side of the log (although not completely, there was about 1cm layer of wood on the surface to mask the hole). No matter how I would place the spoon, the hole would go right through the middle...

Fortunatelly, the other part of the log had only some shallow holes, so I could carve a spoon in the end...

This wood is very similar to apple, it is just as hard and dense. The heartwood has beautiful colors from yellow to brown and red and it is obviously harder than the outer sapwood. It can also be polished very nicely. I expected that almond wood would smell like almonds, but it has no characteristic smell. 
So everything ended well and I learned an important thing: if you see a hole in the wood, always make sure how deep it is before you start carving. Otherwise you can be very surprised!

I Found a Perfect Shape

Sometimes I try to carve a spoon according to some picture from internet and I always learn a lot. This time I chose a spoon by Jarrod Stone Dahl with white painted handle:

And here is the result. I also wanted to try a homemade paint from milk, vinegar, lime and pigment. But I can't take heart to do it because for now I like the spoon just as it is.

No picture can do it justice, but this shape is subtle, elegant and fits nicely to the hand. I think I will make more spoons like this!

Mediterranean Wood

My parents spent their vacation in Croatia and they brought me a few pieces of wood that do not grow in our country. The first one is almond, slightly rotten in the middle section, but it has interesting colors.

The second piece is from "crnika" tree - google says it is called holly oak/holm oak. The wood is very hard and people use it for axe handles. I'll see if it can be used for spoons as well... surely it can't be harder than ebony :)

The last piece is "kostela" or "fafurikula", European nettle tree. I could not find much info about this wood, but it is probably similar to ash wood and sometimes used for furniture.

Experiments with these new woods will be coming soon. Special thanks to Eugen Sikirić for sponsorship and to my father for transporting the wood across Europe :)

Cooking Spoons and Pebbles

In the summer I searched the pile of wood in our garden and I found the rest of the excellent plum wood that I used for carving before. I split it to thin planks and used one plank to carve a cooking spoon. The picture shows the new spoon in the front and one older in the back - it is slightly cracked because I didn't have any better piece of wood at that time.

Next picture shows a birch cooking spoon. The wood was quite knotty, but it made the handle nicely ergonomically bent.

The last item is a pebble from birch wood. The piece of wood was spalted (colored by fungi). It was not suitable for spoons, but I knew how to use it anyway.

Other Things from Plum Wood

I have a stock of fresh plum wood on my balcony. I carved a cooking spoon from the longest log. The wood was a bit knotty, but I managed to make quite a straight handle.

The log was a little longer than I needed. The cut-off was nice, so I made this tiny spoon from it:

This picture shows how plum wood changes its color to brown. The spoon on the left was made about a month ago, the mini spoon a few days ago and the cooking spoon was finished today.

New Plum Wood

I received a few pieces of plum wood. It was still green and easy to carve. At first it had some orange and pink color, but later it changed to brown. I carved this spoon to try it:

Little Salt Spoon

I carved another spoon from peach wood, this time a really small one:

 It will be stored in a salt container and used as a scoop. Peach wood has such wonderful colors!

Bubbles

I found a few pictures of the most recent birch spoon in my computer. The most interesting picture shows how the spoon is soaking in oil:

If you look closer, you see how many tiny bubbles rise from the wood. Denser and less porous wood (like apple, plum) behaves differently; you would hardly see one or two bubbles. On the other hand, many bubbles came from oak, walnut, birch and lime.
If you use walnut oil, there is one more important thing to do: porous spoons which absorbed a lot of oil, should be left in direct sunlight for a few days to let the oil harden properly. It is not really necessary in case of dense woods.
The only really sunny window in my flat is occupied by cactuses, so I usually leave such spoons propped against the flower pots for a few days :)

Pitch-black Spoon

I bought some ebony wood loast year. I left it on the shelf for a long time because it is very hard wood and I didn't feel prepared to carve it yet.
I was not quite sure what spoon to carve from it. In my mind, ebony was linked with intricate, exotic statues and hair combs. I could find one or two pictures of ebony spoons on the internet, but those were so complicated that they could be used only for collecting dust.
Then I was inspired by wooden hair pins and I drew several possible spoon designs. I carved one of them from birch wood and it came out very well.

So I cut into the ebony carving block for the first time. I thought: "Well, it isn't so hard!" but then I had to stop carving after 15 minutes because my strained wrist started to hurt. My knife was so blunt after three carving sessions, that it could not cut into the wood anymore. I realised that I really had to sharpen my knife every day when carving from ebony.

Working with ebony is really peculiar:

• the shavings fly further away and they look like pieces of charcoal (they even contain tiny glittering speckles like charcoal)

• ebony has a very strange smell - you know it's wood, but it also resembles a whiff of smoke and maybe something else that I could not identify
• it splits easily in some directions, but it seems homogeneous and hard like rock in other directions
• it is an ideal material for sanding and polishing - the fibers never rise again after washing, so the wood is not hairy
• the surface was quite smooth after 120 grit sandpaper, higher grits only added more gloss
• ebony does not float in water and it even repels water a bit

 

The hardest part was to hollow out the bowl. The best method was to dig it with Dremel and high speed cutter and finish it with a spoon knife.

I bought very thin high speed cutter bit to carve the decoration on the handle. If I had some skill with the high speed cutting, maybe I could carve the whole pattern (except the corners)... but I prefered to stay away from the borders to avoid cutting away something I shouldn't. It looked quite ugly...

But after removing some unnecessary wood, it looked much better :)

Some Small Stuff

I carved a few small things during some free days. The first is a bathroom hairdryer hanger from cherry wood.

Next, an archer's thumb ring for my sister - the ring is worn on the thumb when drawing the bow string and it protects the thumb from pain and blisters :) This one is from apple wood.

I used the rest of apple wood to carve another wooden pebble.

Pancake Accessories

Cooking spoons bought in a shop or fair often have their drawbacks. First of all, they are sawn regardless of the grain direction, so that they can bend or cup. They are often hairy because the manufacturers did not bother to sand them. But there are other possible accidents: one of my friends bought a pancake spatula which lost its curve and was almost straight after a few uses. It was probably made from steam bent wood...
The same friend asked me for a new pancake spatula together with a small roller for spreading the batter on the pan.

The spatula is from radially cut birch wood, so the flat part should not cup nor bend. The roller is from an applewood cutoff. Since I don't have a lathe, I carved the cylindrical part by hand and then I turned it around inside a small roll of sandpaper until it was smooth and regular.