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 :)