This is a question I get asked a lot. Where do I get wood for carving?
Let's start from the spoon blanks I've hoarded recently.
On the top left there are six pieces of lilac (my parents got the wood from a neighbor who was cutting down some overgrown bushes), on the top right are two pieces of sour cherry (from a dried tree from my sister's boyfriend's parents' garden). On the bottom, left to right, there are three pieces of gooseberry (my brother's friend had to cut down a very old gooseberry and sent me the whole trunk), one piece of cherry and two pieces of hazel (my parents were pruning some trees and bushes in their garden and they put some wood aside for me).
Second picture, left to right: two pieces of sweet chestnut (from a thick branch that broke off from a tree in a local park), one alder (from a tree uprooted in the forest by windstorms), three pieces of sumac (a branch broken by a thunderstorm in the residential area), and then buckthorn, hawthorn and dog rose (environmentalists were eradicating undesirable species from a protected area).
And the last picture shows some wood I've brought from my vacation. On the left side is a tree heather branch found on a trip, on the right side are three pieces of acacia (I asked local people for a few pieces of firewood). The middle piece may also be acacia, but I'm not quite sure. I will write more about these exotic woods later.
So if you want some material for carving, you have several options:
- Spread the word that you have started carving. Tell your family, friends and acquaintances. Send them pictures of your spoons and inconspicuously mention that fruitwood is very good. Then wait. Sooner or later someone will come and say: "I've just cut down an old apple/plum/walnut tree in my garden, do you want the wood?"
- Buy a folding saw and pay attention when you walk in the forests or even in the city. Trees in the parks are sometimes trimmed and branches sometimes break off during wind or snow calamities. Broken branches are generally considered waste, no one will mind if you take one. If you meet the tree surgeons at work, you can ask them for a piece of wood. Likewise, after forest calamities you can find many broken branches that are considered waste. A branch 4-5 cm thick is quite enough for a spoon.
- If you see some interesting wood in someone's yard, you can try to ask for a few pieces. Some kinds of wood (like cherry or walnut) are easily recognizable. If you want just one or two logs, you'll very likely get it for free. Or you can suggest a barter. Always have some spoon pictures in your phone, so that you can easily explain what you need the wood for.
- If you want some exotic wood, you can try to ask companies that sell hardwood floors. Some of them are willing to sell off-cuts and some even give free "samples".
- And of course if you want some specific non-domestic kind of wood, you can buy it online. It can be quite expensive (for example I've paid 22 euro for an olive block 30x4x4 cm) but some kinds of wood may be simply worth it.
Don't forget, before you start carving spoons, do your research and check if the wood contains any toxins. Some trees and bushes are seriously toxic! For example, yew has a nice wood, but don't carve spoons from it.
Obviously, options 1-3 depend on lucky chance. Sometimes you'll have nothing to carve from and sometimes you'll be snowed under heaps of spoon blanks, just like me right now. I have 29 of them! I've been carving about 1 spoon per month, so if i don't hurry up, it may take 2 years and a half to finish it all...
So. It's time to sharpen my knives and start carving.
