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!
This is a cherry spoon I made as a Christmas present. It has a special purpose: scooping large quantities of honey from glass jars for making mead. Therefore the spoon must be long, tough and especially comfortable to hold.
Then there are 4 small spoons from willow wood. People often ask me how long it takes to carve one spoon, so I measured the time and it adds up to 2 hours per spoon. Of course this is an absolute minimum because willow wood is quite soft, the spoons are small and I didn't even sand them.
This video was made in my sister's university lab. It shows how sumac wood glows under a blacklight (fluorescence). Sapwood emits a faint blue glow while heartwood glows bright green.
This wood is not ideal for carving but I carved one more spoon from it. What could be a better gift than a spoon you can impress your labmates with?
This hazel spoon was made in collaboration with my father who is interested in pyrography (decorating wood with burn marks). It turned out so beautiful that we plan to make more spoons like that in the future.
I have a couple of finished spoons here. First one is from acacia, very hard and beautiful wood.
Second spoon is from sweet (European) chestnut. It's been sitting around unfinished since august. The wood has large open pores, so it was difficult to sand properly. But the fish handle looks pretty good.
Last spoon is from cherry (not sanded). I couldn't choose the shape for a long time but at the last moment it sort of decided itself - much better than I could have planned.
Last weekend I attended a course in ULUV. I learned to decorate wood with brass sheetmetal. First you have to sharpen one side of the sheet, then cut a 2mm wide strip, shape it into a wavy line and then hammer it into the wood very carefully to avoid screwing it up. Here is the ornament I've created.
I also made a small bedside table from oak wood at home. It was long ago but I forgot to write about it. It was interesting to tinker at furniture making. And besides, it was impossible to buy what I needed. The wood has already darkened compared to the pic below.
I made these small spoons for my niece and nephew twins. The spoon on the left is from buckthorn and on the right from lilac wood.
This Christmas couldn't have been without some handmade presents. Here are some cooking spoons that ended up under the Christmas tree. The middle spoon was made long ago but now I made it thinner and lighter because it felt unwieldy. The result is much better.
The top spoon is from cherry, middle from plum and bottom from peach wood.
