Why Doesn't Anyone Use Softwood?

Long ago I've read a few on-line manuals how to carve spoons. All of them agree on this: "Never use softwoods! They are too soft, they crack easily and your food will taste like resin!"
But then my colleague brought me a piece of larch and I carved a spoon from it because I'm a deep-dyed optimist.

Now I can say from my own experience that: 

• This wood is not too soft for carving. Some people carve spoons from willow, which is even softer.
• Does it crack? Maybe. I'll find out later.
• The resinous smell is very weak after drying and the taste is neutral.
• And besides (who would say that?) it can be easily sanded without leaving a fuzzy surface after washing.

Look at those colors! And the grain pattern! The best thing about it is that larch will acquire even better color in the future.

Treacherous Almond Wood

I thought I've already experienced all the dirty tricks that wood can prepare for me. I saw knots, irregular and wavy grain, soft punky wood and woodworm holes. But almond prepared a big surprise for me. Note the small hole in the upper part...

At first I thought it was a pulp or some rotten wood, later it seemed like a hole bitten by some mysterious insects. Anyway, the hole branched and it went diagonally to the other side of the log (although not completely, there was about 1cm layer of wood on the surface to mask the hole). No matter how I would place the spoon, the hole would go right through the middle...

Fortunatelly, the other part of the log had only some shallow holes, so I could carve a spoon in the end...

This wood is very similar to apple, it is just as hard and dense. The heartwood has beautiful colors from yellow to brown and red and it is obviously harder than the outer sapwood. It can also be polished very nicely. I expected that almond wood would smell like almonds, but it has no characteristic smell. 
So everything ended well and I learned an important thing: if you see a hole in the wood, always make sure how deep it is before you start carving. Otherwise you can be very surprised!

I Found a Perfect Shape

Sometimes I try to carve a spoon according to some picture from internet and I always learn a lot. This time I chose a spoon by Jarrod Stone Dahl with white painted handle:

And here is the result. I also wanted to try a homemade paint from milk, vinegar, lime and pigment. But I can't take heart to do it because for now I like the spoon just as it is.

No picture can do it justice, but this shape is subtle, elegant and fits nicely to the hand. I think I will make more spoons like this!

Mediterranean Wood

My parents spent their vacation in Croatia and they brought me a few pieces of wood that do not grow in our country. The first one is almond, slightly rotten in the middle section, but it has interesting colors.

The second piece is from "crnika" tree - google says it is called holly oak/holm oak. The wood is very hard and people use it for axe handles. I'll see if it can be used for spoons as well... surely it can't be harder than ebony :)

The last piece is "kostela" or "fafurikula", European nettle tree. I could not find much info about this wood, but it is probably similar to ash wood and sometimes used for furniture.

Experiments with these new woods will be coming soon. Special thanks to Eugen Sikirić for sponsorship and to my father for transporting the wood across Europe :)

Cooking Spoons and Pebbles

In the summer I searched the pile of wood in our garden and I found the rest of the excellent plum wood that I used for carving before. I split it to thin planks and used one plank to carve a cooking spoon. The picture shows the new spoon in the front and one older in the back - it is slightly cracked because I didn't have any better piece of wood at that time.

Next picture shows a birch cooking spoon. The wood was quite knotty, but it made the handle nicely ergonomically bent.

The last item is a pebble from birch wood. The piece of wood was spalted (colored by fungi). It was not suitable for spoons, but I knew how to use it anyway.

Other Things from Plum Wood

I have a stock of fresh plum wood on my balcony. I carved a cooking spoon from the longest log. The wood was a bit knotty, but I managed to make quite a straight handle.

The log was a little longer than I needed. The cut-off was nice, so I made this tiny spoon from it:

This picture shows how plum wood changes its color to brown. The spoon on the left was made about a month ago, the mini spoon a few days ago and the cooking spoon was finished today.

New Plum Wood

I received a few pieces of plum wood. It was still green and easy to carve. At first it had some orange and pink color, but later it changed to brown. I carved this spoon to try it: