Quick Spoon Carving Tip.

Here are a few spoons freshly carved and almost finished. I have found that I get a much nicer finish on the spoons if you immerse them in Linseed oil for a couple of days BEFORE taking the little finishing cuts. Of course this means allowing a bit of extra material as you get close to your final spoon. I think the oil consolidates the wood fibres and also lubricates the knife cuts.

I often go back to spoons and other treen months after making and oiling them and find a much nicer surface can be attained, then simply re-oil them. I recently did this with the very first item I made chez Robin Wood ( sacrilege, I know) and refined it to a design I am really happy with, and have been using as a template for a batch- I'll post some pics anon.

Cheers John

Timber I.D

The question I seem to get asked the most when I make something for somebody or do a bit of demonstrating at the local country park, is 'what wood is it made out of'. With this in mind I decided to come up with a system of identifying timber for the benefit of the recipient. The symbols below are Runes that I chose because they are almost all straight lines and thus quick and easy to discretely carve on the back of my work As it states, this is just my own system and does not relate to the real meaning of Runes, which I know nothing about. I know I am not re-inventing the wheel here, but thought it may be of interest to other folk. Here are some examples of the carved symbols on finished work. I use the point of my frosts carving knife to carve these, choked right up to within an inch to afford close control. Draw the lines in pencil and come in either side with angled cuts to form the line. I sometimes give engraving definition by smudging in ground coffee before oiling.

The last time I demonstrated, I made some of these timber discs to help folk identify timber. they are sanded and treated with sanding sealer to help preserve the colour a little longer. I did have quite a few more but they seemed very popular and folk kept blagging them off me- presumably for coasters. They have labels on the back to identify the species but I won't publish pics of the reverse sides for a few days so you can test your knowledge. Unfortunately the pics aren't very good as it has been really overcast here today.

Cheers for now, John

Patina

I often make kitchen utensils out of spare bits of timber I have lying around to through in the kitchen drawers at the station. These are a few that were made out of Sycamore a while ago. I don't go overboard in making them as they are very much used and abused on a daily basis, a lot just disappearing. I find it interesting though to see how quickly they pick up a nice patina due to constant use. It's also interesting to not the ones which seem to get the most use- as this is nice feedback for making kitchen sets for people. Interestingly, the lads tell me they like the scabby one third from the right (which was obviously made from sawn rather than cleft wood!!), must be because it can scrape into corners.

Today I nipped up to my local Tack suppliers to get some more Linseed oil. I finish all my woodenware pieces that will come into contact with food, with Cold pressed or Raw Linseed Oil. This cures much more slowly (at least 3 months) than boiled linseed oil but contains no harmful additives. With smaller items such as spoons, I first of all heat up the oil in a pan and submerse the piece to drive the oil into the endgrain pores.

Here you can see the moisture and air fizzing as it is forced out of the endgrain pores. This means oil absorbs more deeply into the wood fibres to replace the dispersed moisture.

After the heat treatment I throw the pieces in my oil bath for a few days to saturate. This is simply a bain marie full of linseed oil in my shed. The removable tray is handy for pinning down the wooden pieces and keeping them fully submerged. As I say the curing process takes a few months to complete, but if you can, it is advantageous to periodically re-oil your pieces to keep them water resistant.

Cheers John

Carving a wooden spoon Pt3

Here's how the Sycamore spoon/ladle turned out. I think I took these pictures after an initial 3 or 4 day soaking in a bain marie that I have full of cold pressed linseed oil (aka flax seed oil). It takes quite a while for the oil to fully cure and the wood benefits greatly from subsequent soakings from time to time. I find that I can get a better tooled finish on some timbers if I do the final finishing cuts AFTER a soaking in oil. I guess this is due to fibres consolidating and the lubricating action of the oil.

The delicate finishing cuts may incorporate some of the cuts described in previous posts but in the most part , I use the 'thumb push' stroke. As illustrated below , the thumb of the hand not holding the knife handle either pushes the blade through the wood, removing small shavings; or , the thumb acts as a fixed fulcrum point, and the knife hand performs a sweep to remove the shaving.

Here are some spoons I recently made as gifts for folk. I've experimented with a bit of ornamentation 'Sundqvist style' to make them bespoke. Most of the top set are in Rhododendron, and the bottom one is in Whitebeam. I use instant coffee to fill the engraving cuts.