Gooseberry and Sour Cherry

Today will be a fruit day on the blog :)

First off, here is a spoon from gooseberry wood. It is similar to plum wood, but a little bit softer. The pink and light brown parts of the wood turn dark brown over time.

And the second spoon is from sour cherry wood. It smelt vaguely like cherry stones and also a bit like dried coconut flakes. Otherwise it's very much like cherry wood.

Wood from Madeira

I visited Madeira in the summer. The name means "wood" in Portuguese and there are many exotic (at least for me) species of wood. So I knew that the best souvenir would be a piece of some local wood.

First I got a piece of tree heather. It is a bush from the heather family and it grows in the mountains just like the mountain pine grows in Europe. And likewise it is sometimes trimmed when it starts overgrowing the hiking trails. So I just picked a piece of branch left on the roadside. The wood was apparently very dense and later I learned that it was also partially heat-resistant.

Then I got several pieces of acacia. Unlike the tree heather, acacia is not native to Madeira, it was imported from Australia. It is often used as firewood (the owners of the restaurant/grill were surprised why I asked for a piece of wood but I got it for free). The wood is light but hard and it has nice colors.

At first I thought that both logs I got were from acacia. But after splitting it was apparent that one wood has different color, grain and hardness. It looks like some sort of oak to me, but I'm not completely sure. Maybe I'll be able to identify it later.

One more picture of the wood from Madeira: tree heather on the left, the unknown wood in the middle and acacia on the right.

New Species of Wood

I finished three new spoons (not from the 29 spoon blanks I've mentioned before, these are extra).

The spoon on the left is from European purging buckthorn bush. Some sources say that purging buckthorn is toxic - but its toxicity limited to laxative effects (which is why it is called "purging"). If you ate the whole buckthorn spoon, you could get diarrhea... but mainly from fiber overdose ;)

This wood's endgrain resembles black locust but it has much nicer colors. It is also harder than black locust, more prone to tearout and much easier to sand and polish.

The small spoon in the middle is from dog rose. This wood is very good for carving - it is dense, smooth and fine-grained. It's a pity that it only comes in such small pieces because dog roses seldom grow thicker.

The spoon on the right is from alder. This wood has a reddish hue but it should change to light brown over time. I sanded the spoon but I realized that alder is not very good for sanding. It takes very long to polish properly and besides, alder wood is naturally quite smooth if it's left with knife finish.

I have one more piece of wood from all three species, so there will be some similar spoons later.

Where Do You Get Wood?

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:

1. 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?"
   
2. 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.
   
3. 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.
   
4. 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".
   
5. 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.

Baked Wood

Yes, it's true. Not only I store wood in the freezer, I also bake it in the oven!

And what is it good for?

Well, people in general seem to love and prefer dark wood. So I take a pale and dull spoon from maple wood, I bake it at 200°C and I wait until it looks like this:

(Of course you shouldn't wait too long, otherwise you may end up with a piece of charcoal.)

I also have a new spoon from leftover hornbeam wood. It escaped being baked in the oven because it has a nice grain pattern as it is.

New Wood for my Collection: Staghorn Sumac

In the autumn I've obtained a broken branch of staghorn sumac. The wood has strips of various colors: white, yellow, beige, greenish and dark brown. This is my first sumac spoon, the rest of the wood is stored in the freezer.

The wood is quite soft and fibrous, the brown growth rings are porous. In term of structure, it is not the best wood for carving but the colors are worth it.