Many experienced carvers don't like sandpaper, some of them almost fanatically. They say that people don't try to carve better when they know that the imperfect tool cuts would be sanded anyway. Moreover, when you sand a spoon and wash it, the wood fibers swell and create a "hairy" texture, which makes the spoon unpleasant to touch. Sanding the spoon so that the grain would not rise is quite difficult and slow. And many people just like the tool cut finish.
Maybe there is something to it - but unsanded spoons seem unfinished to me and I'm not particularly fond of tool cut finish. The harder wood you use, the less fiber raises after sanding and washing - so for example my applewood spoon is smooth like glass, while a spoon from limewood just remained hairy even after the finest sandpaper.
But this time I decided to make an exception and carve a spoon just like I saw on other carvers' blogs - from softer, green wood, without sanding - just to see how it turns out. The inspiration comes from
this blog.
Birch wood surprised me in several aspects: it gains a reddish hue when exposed to the air, and after drying it smells a bit like fried oil. It does not look porous, but when I dipped the finished spoon into walnut oil, it released lots of tiny bubbles and the wood absorbed so much oil that the thinnest parts became a bit translucent...
The spoon looks quite fine without sanding...
... but I'm not content with the chip carving decoration. I have to work on it a little more...
