It is an exciting time for me at the moment.
I am presently working with Christopher Grant on a design for a very usable and quick carving knife. He is a very well known Bladesmith who lives in a beautiful part of West Scotland. He will have a prototype made up shortly and as soon as I can I will post some photographs. In the mean time it occurred to me that I haven't written about how to make a simple spoon...
The weather here has been wonderful these last few weeks and I have spent lots of time under the Golden Ash carving out some spoons for our next show.
I also thought it was high time I made a spoon for Sarah.
She sees so many spoons leaving for other homes that sometimes she fells a little left out...
Start off by finding yourself a piece of green wood wide enough, plus a bit, that will accommodate the size of spoon you have in mind. Try and find a piece of Birch or Sycamore to start with as these woods lend themselves to spoon carving.
I salvaged a piece of Birch I had forgotten about in the garage and split a good sized billet from it, making sure before I began that the wood was sound, without any signs of splitting....
The first thing to do is remove the bark, then roughly shape out the top face of the spoon with your sharp Axe...
Make it straight it you wish or make it s little more feminine with a nice sweep...
Chop in the shoulders of the bowl. These cuts will also act as stop cuts when you start to reveal the handle sides...
Once you have the shoulders cut in, remove the waste wood along the handle with either feather cuts or simply split the wood away...
Here's what should be left...
The next thing to do is carefully cut in a tilt to the bowl...
And you will produce something like this...
Chop out the underside of the handle, keeping a nice sweep...
And finally chop out the underside of the bowl...
From this blank you can start with your carving knife. Carefully removing all that isn't needed.
Probably time for a coffee at this stage...
I like to make my spoons as flowing as possible. Although this is harder and takes longer to achieve, I find the end result very pleasing...
The final shape is beginning to appear...
You will now have to pay some attention to cutting out the bowl using your spoon knife...
Cutting across the grain...
Now is the time to make another pot of coffee and start some old fashioned scraping until the spoon is smoother, ready for a little glass paper...
Scrape, drink and eat...
Until...
Henny Penny, the wonderchicken says your work is done...
Oh and not forgetting Floppity Flo...
I am sure Sarah will love her new spoon.
I am taking details for courses over the summer for small groups, drop me a line at...
firststeps@thewood.eclipse.co.uk
Any questions then feel free to post a comment or even E mail me...
Enjoy...
Very nice.
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