Before I continue with the making tutorial; I thought I'd expand a little on what I was saying about the time of year you make your pots. A friend came by the other day and wanted a couple with utensils for christmas gifts, and was remarking about how much he liked the 'bark-on' Birch ones. In the uk, now (our winter) is the best time to harvest timber if you want to keep the bark on as it is sap free and tightly adhered to the wood. Birch is extremely common here in the Yorkshire coal fields as it seems to be a first populator of derelict pit sites. There is a lot of resource on the net about uses of Birch bark so I won't go into detail here , except to say it is almost leather like in its use here so can be carved or embossed in a similar fashion for ornamentation.
Anyway, I took the opportunity to harvest some that had been damaged by a recent storm.
These are the tools (along with a mallet) that I use for 99% of the hollowing out I do.
This time I'm protecting the bark from damage in the clamp as it will be staying on.
I walloped a few of these out pretty quickly; green timber is nice and easy to work.
These are some I did a while ago; the ones on the left have had a quick soaking in Linseed oil and have taken on a pleasing orange hue.
I don't have many pots to show as most of them get given away but here's a few to show different woods. Elder:
Apple:
Elm:
Maple:
Heres some that have simple decoration with spoon knife tool marks. The timber is Birch:
Pyrographed Maple:
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