Wood from my Coursemates

At the end of 2023, I signed up for a relief carving course at ÚĽUV. Besides reliefs, we also carved some spoons, and people brought in all kinds of interesting types of wood. I even got a few pieces from them to use for my future spoons.

The first spoon from the left is made of apricot wood. The wood is hard and it has beautiful colors and grain. This particular little log was so knotty that I had a really hard time finding a piece with just a single knot, which ended up right in the middle of the spoon... plus, right at the very end, that black stripe showed up at the bottom of the spoon. I’d take apricot wood again any day... just preferably not so knotty next time :D

The spoon in the middle is made of mulberry. The sapwood (the light part) kept tearing out, so it gave me quite a hard time. Luckily it turned out to be easy to sand and it takes a silky smooth finish. And the heartwood has this gorgeous iridescent shimmer depending on how the light hits it (it's called chatoyancy).

 

The little spoon is made of grapevine. This wood is pretty much useless - it has huge open pores, it's hard to carve, even harder to sand, and you can't get the surface completely smooth. I only finished this spoon out of sheer stubbornness, since I cut myself right at the start and didn't want my blood spilled for nothing :D

 

Thanks, friends. It was definitely a challenge.

 

To wrap things up, here’s one little spoon made of cherry wood.

 

 

 

And in case you're wondering what kind of relief I carved during the course, here it is:

 

 

Hardwood and Evenharderwood

So, I finally got around to the lilac wood. Here are two new spoons made from it. I tried baking the one on the left in the oven at 200°C to see if it would turn brown but lilac behaves differently from beech. The wood stayed the same, it just started smelling more lemon-like.

And here is one more little spoon made of cornel wood. The wood comes from Ukraine (huge thanks to Oksana for donating it).

The Last Gooseberry Spoon

I just used up my very last piece of gooseberry wood and carved this spoon out of it.

I also made a second cherry wood spoon (and unfortunately also the last one, because I ran out of wood):

 

 

 

With that, I’ve pretty much gone through most of the spoon blanks I mentioned in this post, except for the lilac wood. I haven't really felt like working with lilac since last year because it’s insanely hard.

 

 

 

In the top row from left to right: 6x lilac, 2x sour cherry. In the bottom row: 3x gooseberry, 1x cherry and 2x hazel.

 

 

 

Spoon number 1 is on the right in this photo (it ended up as a gift):

 

 

 

And here is spoon number 2 (I sold it recently, though maybe I should have kept it):

 

  

 

Pewter Inlay

I just finished an applewood spoon with a pewter-inlay design.

If you want to know how it's made: first, you need to carve the pattern into the wood about 4mm deep. The edges should widen slightly toward the bottom so the pewter doesn't pop out. Next, you need to make a little wooden "chimney" - a mold to pour the pewter. This mold needs to be cut lengthwise so it can be disassembled later.

Place the mold onto the wood and thoroughly wrap everything around it with masking tape to seal all the cracks. Pewter is a tricky stuff and will leak through the tiniest gap.

 

 

 

Once everything is ready, you can pour the melted pewter.

 

 

 

When the pewter hardens, peel off the tape and remove the mold. You can cut off the excess pewter with a hacksaw, level it out with a chisel and sand it down.

 

 

 

The dark spots in the photo above aren't burnt, it's just glue residue from the masking tape. Either way, it still needed a ton of sanding. Finally, I polished the pewter using a small stone.

 

Second Gooseberry Spoon

Some time ago I finished the second spoon made from gooseberry wood. It also turned out to be exceptionally beautiful. You can judge for yourself.

Three Cherry Spoons

My colleague Radko gave me a large stock of cherry wood. I used it to make this series of three spoons.

 

 

Are you saying that you see only two?

Well that's because I finished the last spoon later and I forgot to take a picture of the whole series. Try to imagine the third spoon in the middle of the picture. It looks basically the same but it has an elliptical pattern in the bowl.

 

Or perhaps you can find all three spoons on this picture of the handover to the new owners. Really, there are three spoons there if you look closely :D

Mysterious Wood from Madeira

I finally finished a spoon from the wood I brought from Madeira and I mentioned it in this post.

  

 

The wood was very hard, ring-porous, without smell. I still think it could be some rare species of oak (similar to holly oak) but I wasn't able to find it online despite googling for a long time. So if someone recognizes it, I would be grateful for any hint!