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.

Christmas Spoon from Beech

I salvaged a beech log from a pile of firewood in the summer and I used it to carve this spoon.

I started to imitate a spoon from this gallery, but I slightly changed everything - the handle is a little wider, the bowl is more narrow, the wood pattern is totally different - but some similarity still remained.

The spoon is very nicely curved from the side.

After soaking the spoon in oil, a dark pattern appeared on the reverse side - it seems that the oil was absorbed faster in the spiral lines cut on the front side and it soaked through the fibers down to the reverse side. I assume that this pattern won't last very long, though...

Growth Rings

Last time I wrote about radial cut and then I decided to write how the cut would influence the wood pattern on a carved spoon. Let's begin with an ordinary log:

There are different ways to carve a spoon from the highlighted part.

1) Radial cut: the spoon will have a pattern of parallel lines. Examples: 1, 2.

2) Tangential cut (pith above the spoon): this is quite logical choice, especially if you have smaller diameter wood. The outer rim is naturally curved to form a bowl and the inner angled part would form a handle (at least a narrow one). The resulting pattern may vary, depending on the diameter of the log: a spoon from a thicker log is on the left, a spoon from a thinner log on the right side. Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4.

However, if the log had a large diameter (e.g. a trunk of a big tree), the spoon may have an oval pattern. The ovals are crosswise to the spoon. Example: 1.

3) Tangential cut (pith below the spoon): if you have a larger diameter log, it is interesting to cut a spoon upside down. The spoon would have lengthwise oval rings in the bowl. Examples: 1, 2.

Beauty in Simplicity

After a long time I carved a spoon from radially cut peach wood. Radial cut is like when you split a log and you see the growth rings as parallel lines on the split surface. Well, they are not as parallel on this spoon because the wood formed a slight spiral.

 

I used very simple shape, similar to ordinary metal spoons. It is perfectly symetrical, even if it doesn't seem so because of the wavy wood pattern.

Radial cut has its advantages: the spoon is stronger because the fibers are parallel with the handle, and it is more easy to crank the handle because the wood does not peel off so much during cutting (but this is rather hard to explain, you'd have to try it :))

I had a fancy for Viennese nougat all the time because some shavings look just like nougat...