Crack Willow

Whilst I'm working with it I thought I'd add a bit of a note about the timber I used. Crack willow is a very common site along river banks and flood plains in the Uk. Its latin name is Salix Fragilis, which pertains to the brittleness of its twigs which break off easily. These are carried by the river and redeposited to propagate it. Willow is extremely easy to propagate simply by pushing a piece of twig into the ground. Near where I live you don't have  to go far to find examples of mature trees that have broken in the wind. Walking underneath them in stormy weather is ill advised!

This is a log similar in size of the billet I used for the spoon tutorial, about 4 or 5" diameter.

The timber, in my experience is really easy to cleave and contains some pleasant orange colouring. I have noticed there can be some tiny little voids in the wood similar to bark inclusions, though they are quite sparse. As I mentioned in the spoon tutorial, I think the wood is a little soft for treen and not easy to get a nice finish on due to fluffy fibres and the fact that it marks really easily with e.g a fingernail. It is however quite inert in taste to use for treen.

Here are a few more cooking spoons I've roughly carved from the same log. I oiled the centre one with cold pressed linseed oil just to show how it bring out the colour. Personally I don't oil spoons any more as a matter of course, particularly eating spoons as the taste of the oil is strong and persistent.

JM