How to Make a Shepherd's Shrink Cup, Part 3 (Hollowing)

There are three types of shepherd's shrink cups that differ in the shape of the cup and also the way of attaching the handle. I will describe shepherd's shrink cups from central Slovakia region where the handle is attached with a hook on its upper part and a brass hoop on its lower part. I consider it the least difficult option concerning both materials and methods.
So what tools do you need?

• saw
• something for drilling (the wider drill the better)
• knife
• gouge (straight, with U-shaped edge, but not too deep, about 2cm wide) 
• straight edge gouge 3mm wide
• (optional) coarse sandpaper
• metal cutting shears and small hammer (only if you want to use a brass hoop)
• patience (lots, you'll really need it)

First you have to select an appropriate piece of wood. Maple is the best option but you can also use alder or birch. If you have neither, you can try another hardwood (for example I successfully made experimental mini-cups from willow). Choose a log which is at least 10 cm long and wide, without knots and side branches because they would complicate the hollowing. The log must be green and processed immediately, so that it has no time to crack.
Peel the selected log and drill a hole through the center. I tried to use a 2 cm wide drill bit with a corded drill but it was quite hard and slow work. Then I bought an auger and it was much faster. But I'm not saying that you must buy an auger too. You can also drill more narrow holes side by side and remove the wood between them with a gouge.

If you have some powerful tool, drill or lathe that can make 6-10 cm wide hole, don't hesitate and use it. Ideally the hole should be as wide as the inside of the cup. In such case you are done with hollowing. If the hole is more narrow, you must carve away the remaining wood with a knife, spoon knife or carving gouge. And do it quickly before the wood dries because dry wood is much harder.

If you use a spoon knife, the inside of the cup will be uneven despite the best effort. Then it may happen that you will carve the bottom according to the lower rim, but the groove will be a few milimeters above it and the bottom won't fit there.

If you carve the inside with a knife, the inner walls probably won't be smooth. There will be scratches because of the angle between the knife and the inner wall.

I recommend to hollow with any tool that works well for you and to finish the inner walls with a carving gouge. Of course you can use the gouge all the time, with a mallet or without it. The gouge on the picture below is too deep for this and you would do much better with a shape more similar to the inside curve of the cup.
I've seen even better hollowing tool (from a shrink cup maker Miroslav Barnišin), but I don't know where to get something like it.

Finally measure the diameter of the cup and write it down together with the exact spot where you measured it because the log is not a perfect circle. Then leave the cup dry for at least two weeks and then measure again. Divide the difference by two and you will get the depth of the groove.

For example my experimental willow mini-cup shrank from 7,352 cm to 6,99 cm, so the groove should be just around 1,7 milimeter. For normal-sized shrink cups (8-9 cm in diameter) you can use standard depth 2mm and leave out the exact measuring.

<< Part 2  |  Part 4 >>

How to Make a Shepherd's Shrink Cup, Part 2 (Sources)

There is an excellent book about shepherd's cups here. It contains lots of pictures, something from history and some interesting things about the symbolic meaning of traditional decoration patterns used on the shepherd's cups.
A few old articles and some videos can be also found online (in Slovak):

• http://www.muzeumpd.sk/buxus/docs/CRPAK_Exponat.pdf - some details about making the cups
• http://www.stieranka.sk/riad.htm - a nice comparison of various regional types of shepherd's cups
• https://mynovohrad.sme.sk/c/5051055/crpaky-z-klenovca-poznaju-aj-v-zahranici.html - an article about Milan Stieranka, shepherd's cup maker who owns the website above
• https://tv.sme.sk/v/24596/rezbar-z-nudze.html - a video about an old shepherd who carves shrink cups as an additional source of income

I also discovered shrink pots which are similar to shepherd's shrink cups, but without handle. This craft is not so carefully guarded, so you can actually find some online instructions:

• https://davidffisherblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/the-magic-of-a-shrink-box/
• https://davidffisherblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/making-a-shrink-box1.pdf
• http://seanhellman.blogspot.sk/2011/05/shrink-pot-and-shrink-pot-croze.html 

And there is a nice video here (choose "Swedish shrink box" from the list of episodes):
http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/watch-on-line/watch-season-episodes/2016-2017-episodes/
But don't take this video too seriously. In fact, hollowing a shrink pot is not as easy as it seems. After a while you'll start feeling some muscles that you didn't even know you had. 
Compared to a shrink pot, a shepherd's cup must be watertight, so the groove and the bottom must be made very precisely. In the next part I'll tell you what I've learned, so that you don't have to repeat the same mistakes. If you know something more, you can write me a comment.

<< Part 1  |  Part 3 >>

How to Make a Shepherd's Shrink Cup, Part 1 (Or How It Crossed My Mind)

I went to Craftsmen days festival a few years ago and I noticed an amazing shepherd's shrink cup with a dragon head on the handle (these cups were traditionally used on mountain sheep farms for drinking žinčica, a drink from sheep milk whey). They are usually decorated with figures of sheep, shepherds or bears, but I consider dragons much more cool. I didn't buy the cup, it was quite expensive - but I noticed that the bottom was from a different piece of wood, fitting so tightly that it was waterproof. And I tried to find out how it was made.
The maker's wife told me that the cup must be boiled in hot water to expand. A bottom from dry wood is inserted into a groove inside. When the wood dries, the cylinder shrinks tightly around the bottom.
I thought I could try it someday, so I asked how long the wood must be boiled, but the maker's wife didn't know. And when I asked her husband the same question, he looked at me like "You want to steal my trade secrets!" and he gave me very evasive answers.
But he had no idea what a stubborn person he'd just met.
So I tried to search on the internet... and I found nothing. Only much later I realized why there were no online instructions. The shepherds have always learned the carving skills personally, from one generation to another. Even today's makers learned their craft directly from the old masters. And no one ever realized that it could be done otherwise. After all, most of them don't even have their own website, not to mention facebook or instagram. So the whole craft of making shepherd's shrink cups is practically ignored by a new generation of people who find everything online.
And I think it's about time to change it.

Part 2 >>

Olive Branch, Part Two

This week I've finished the second spoon from the bent olive branch. I used the inner half of the crook again because the outer part was full of knots.

In this case the top surface of the branch is rounded but you need a flat top for the spoon. So first you have to remove about half of the thickness from the top. The result looks like a miniature wooden ski. Then you can carve the handle and the bottom of the bowl.

Here is the finished spoon, also together with the previous one from the same branch. The new spoon is smaller because the branch was much more narrow there. For a moment I even thought that there won't be enough wood left between all those hidden knots... but everything turned out well.

A Holiday Souvenir

Other people usually bring sea shells, fridge magnets or bottles of some local booze from their vacation. This time we brought a broken olive branch that we've found during our trips on Krk island. (Well okay, we also brought some pebbles from the beach...)

I cut the branch into two bent pieces. One of them is already split and prepared for carving on the picture below.

Sometimes you have to shape the bent branch properly, otherwise you end up with a spoon that looks crooked.

And here is the result. The branch was too thin to have the typical wavy pattern of olive wood, but it was just as hard as heartwood. I also realized that only dead wood from some side branches had the typical olive smell. So I think that an olive tree uses the aromatic oils to preserve the inactive parts of wood from decay.

Pink that Won't Last

I carved a new spoon from plum wood using my favorite design:

Before you start wondering about the pink color of wood, I'll tell you what it will look like in a few months. You can see this spoon from the same log on the picture below. The end of the handle is not completely brown yet because I store it in a cup handle down, so the light does not shine on it very much.

So the only way to keep the bright colors is to store the spoon in a dark room and keep it away from the daylight forever :)

Beech from the Freezer

The green beech wood that I've brought from the forest in spring is now split into smaller pieces and stored in the freezer. I took the pieces out one by one and  used them for carving. (They were in the freezer because the wood stays wet that way and it is much easier to carve.)

This shape of cooking spoon is inspired by two great carvers: Yoav Elkayam and Jojo Wood. Apart from flat spatulas, this is the first cooking spoon design that I'm happy with. I will surely make more spoons like this.

This spoon is made according to medieval Spanish spoons from Robin Wood's blog. I just changed the handle ending because I don't like the original one :)