Christmas Presents

Handmade gifts are the best... but there is a catch in making them. Sometimes they turn out so well that you would really prefer to keep them.

This is a salad fork and scoop from plum wood.

This is a coffee spoon with hook from lilac wood (this time I sharpened the knives really well, so the carving was no problem).

And finally, everything together for scale.
Tomorrow I will let them go.

Peach Spoons and Other Things

I've carved several things since the summer but I always forgot to take pictures. These are two peach spoons for commission.

The spoon below was originally also a part of the commission, but I liked it too much and decided to keep it.

 

I got a small plum branch from a colleague who is learning to carve and so I carved this little spoon from it (design by Spångossen):

Lilac, Second Try

I was tidying the cellar recently, so I also went through my stack of dry wood and I sorted out all cracked and knotty pieces. I found a few lilac branches and carved a new spoon. My first experiment with lilac wood is documented here.

Maybe I got used to green (and much softer) cherry wood, so dry lilac was a bit of a shock. But the hard work paid off. I don't know any other wood so unbelievably smooth after polishing.

There was a small knot on the bottom. It could be avoided, but the spoon would have to me much smaller, so I rather left it there.

Grain Patterns

I finished two new spoons from wild cherry. This is the first one, the shape is based on the pattern created by growth rings on the handle.

This is the second one, placed "upside down" with respect to the center of the growth rings.

And here are all the cherry spoons together. The sapwood sometimes stayed white, sometimes oxidized to reddish color and sometimes it is separated from heartwood with a distinctive white strip.

First and second spoon from the left is a reversed tangential cut, third is a tangential cut and the last is a radial cut. Here is the schema:

Cherries all around

The last spoon from wild cherry was so nice that I couldn't leave all that remaining wood from the broken cherry tree to rot in the forest. I went there again and split a few more pieces.
So much for my resolution that I won't overfill my freezer with green wood anymore.

First I carved these two cooking spoons (not oiled yet).

Then there's this spoon with a dramatic contrast between heartwood and sapwood.  White sapwood oxidized to orange color, probably because I soaked it repeatedly during sanding.

And finally one more spoon from apple wood.

Hornbeam and Wild Cherry

I have two new species of wood in my collection. The first is a wild cherry. There are many wild cherries growing in this area and they blossom beautifully every spring together with blackthorn bushes. But many trees are very old and we found one of them uprooted this winter.

The heartwood has a pretty shade of brown, the sapwood was completely white during carving, but later it oxidized to orange hue. The lower picture also shows a white strip that remained between them.

On the other hand, hornbeam wood is very pale, but it has very interesting patterns.

Elven Spoons

This is a spoon from apple wood that I carved before Christmas. Jarko says it looks elven. I can quite imagine Elves in Rivendell eating with such spoons.

So I made another spoon like that - also from apple wood but this piece has a nice golden color. I tried to carve the same shape.

And here are both spoons. They may look the same at the first sight, until you notice the place where the handle meets the bowl. I carved the notch too deep on the upper spoon and it disrupted the harmony of curves somehow. It does not look ugly but it is different than I wanted it.
So here is the moral: measure twice, cut once! Little details matter.

Narrow-leafed Ash

I gained some ash wood last year after a windstorm. There were many broken branches from ash trees in the park and one small log ended at my place. This ash tree had different leaves than usual - I learned that it is narrow-leaved ash that usually grows in the south.
An unfinished spoon from this wood has been lying on my table since Christmas and I didn't know what to do with it. But then I found inspiration here.

Ash wood is ring-porous: it has big open pores aligned around the growth rings. I like the pattern that the pores create on the handle, so I decided to highlight it a little. I put some cinnamon on the handle, let the grains sink into the pores and then I finished it with walnut oil.

I've also carved this little cooking spoon using apple wood from the freezer. My freezer still contains five spoon blanks from fruitwood, a small maple log for a shrink cup, a few offcuts from various kinds of wood and one bent willow branch, presumably as a backup. I know, other people store ice-cream and packs of frozen vegetables in their freezers... I definitely think I should free some space in mine and this is the start.

Cup from Birch Burl

About a year ago I received a piece of birch with a fist-sized burl (or rather two burls, one bigger and one smaller, joined together). I finally took courage to carve something from it during Christmas vacation. I wasn't sure if I would succeed, so I didn't even take pictures during the carving. Now I regret it because it turned out excellent.

First I sawed the burl off the branch. The top layers were soft and porous like normal birch wood, but the material was darker, denser and harder inwards. I wanted to hollow the inside of the cup, but the wood was as hard as nails on that side. So I began with a drill and high speed cutter and then I extended the hole with carving gouges and a spoon knife.

A knife was sufficient for shaping the outside walls but I had to be very careful because the wavy wood tore out easily in some places. The smaller burl was transformed into a tiny handle.

 

Carving from burls is challenging but the wood pattern is worth it. The light strips occur in the places where the direction of the fibers changes. And they even move slightly before your eyes when you turn the wood under a lamp, which is a truly fascinating sight.