Spoon Carving Course

I organized a spoon carving course for a couple of friends. We worked with willow, alder and cherry wood. First we were training the basic knife cuts and then we carved our spoons in 1 day. And here is the result (one more unfinished spoon is missing on the picture):

 

Acacia Wood from Madeira

Finally, I managed to finish the spoon from acacia wood that I mentioned here. I made two other spoons from this wood previously, but those were from an acacia branch which wasn't all that hard. But this was a piece of heartwood, heavy and rock-hard. The spoon has been lying around in various stages of unfinished for more than a year. I'd work on it now and than, only to leave it aside again. Plus, I couldn't decide on the right shape. In the end I somehow managed to finish it.

After sanding, I put the spoon in the oven to dry, but I accidentally left the oven set to 200 degrees Celsius :) Luckily, it didn't harm the spoon, just the orange stripes turned a bit more pink and purple. 

I also wanted to try inlaying with brass wire, but I'll get to that another time :) 

Sumac and Dog Rose

I have some new spoons from interesting wood: the striped one is American sumac, the light one is dog rose. The second photo shows the spoons when they were unfinished. 

 

I added the dog rose spoon to a set of two matching ones.

 

I also have some new pieces in my wood stash: right to left some more sumac (from a broken tree near my appartment), russian silverberry (from clearing some self-sown trees), and one white piece of wood I brought back from my vacation, probably prunus lusitanica.

 

Second Cornel Spoon

In January I finished the second spoon from cornel wood, which is very dense and tough. The spoon quickly found its way to Oksana, my original sponsor of cornel wood. I still have two smaller pieces left for more little spoons. 

 

Below is the hornbeam spoon next to an unfinished acacia spoon I’ve been working on for a few months now. As soon as I successfully sand it, I will write more about the wood.

 

New Wood for My Collection: Aspen

Last year I found a piece of broken aspen in a forest. Here is the spoon I made from it. The wood is light and easy to work with, but also strong. The kolrosing pattern is filled with a natural red ochre pigment. I was inspired by Maryanne McGinn's amazing work.

And here is a spoon from lilac wood. I made it to order in April and I almost forgot about it :) 

Spoon Inspired by Provence

Last year I got to explore a fascinating part of Provence. My favorite spot was the ochre quarries in Luberon. I bought some ochre pigment there and I planned to use it for coloring spoons. 

 

I spent a long time thinking about the design and I finally went with the Roman shields pattern from the triumphal arch in Orange. 

 

And here’s the result - a spoon made from alder wood. Cedar would have been more thematically fitting, but unfortunately, I didn’t come across any random cedar logs lying around in France. I still have two more shades of pigment, so maybe I’ll make a few more spoons like this someday.

 

New Wood For My Collection: Elm

After the big floods last September, I obtained a piece of elm wood. It looked interesting at first glance and it also has a nice color. 

 

Up until now, I’ve sorted wood into two categories: “Better to sand” and “Better not to sand.” But elm doesn’t fit into either.

The surface stays annoyingly rough after carving, even with a super sharp blade. Sanding took forever and the surface never got completely smooth. Maybe that’s the reason why I've never heard about anything made from elm wood.

So now I have a brand new category for elm: “Better not to use” :)

And Where Are Christmas Spoons?

It turns out that my family already is well-equipped with spoons, spatulas, ladles and other kitchen utensils. This Christmas I got a different request: wooden mushrooms that could be attached to the fridge with magnets. So I dug through the wood stash in my basement. I chose a small piece of plum wood and a scrap of hornbeam burl - a leftover from carving a cup. 

This is where some clever electric tool would come in handy because those tiny pieces of wood were difficult to hold firmly and my hands were hurting. But other than that, it was fun work. I played around with the wood types and textures. I left the stems with a delicate knife-carved texture, I sanded and polished the tops of the caps and I kept the bottoms of the caps unsanded and slightly porous to the touch. The grain in the stems runs mostly lengthwise, while the growth rings on the caps make concentric circles when you look from above.

 

Everything was going great until I realized that even strong neodymium magnets aren’t enough to keep stuff on the fridge. The magnets that I used should theoretically pull almost a kilogram of weight but my tiny mushrooms, which weigh just a few grams, kept sliding and flipping upside down stubbornly. Adding more magnets didn’t help either. 

So I visited an unnamed DIY megastore with a vague idea of looking for something thin, adhesive, but not sticky. I searched the entire shelf of tapes (who knew there were so many kinds?!) and finally I stumbled on vulcanizing tape which is basically just a thin slice of rubber. This solved the whole problem like a charm. 

 

Here are the finished mushrooms after sanding and waxing. They stay in place just as they are supposed to.

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!

Some New Spoons

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.