another spoon from some L. Gandsey offcuts

I had another blank/offcut from Lawrence Gandsey's shop in a wood that I haven't worked before but i _think_ it might be Elm? not sure. it's not quite as hard as maple, but it cleaves nice and clean with a sharp knife. the wood is a bit tawnier and caramel colored especially when you get a wax-smooth cut directly from your knives.

This shape of spoon, i call a "spoochula" because it is very useful in stir-frying vegetables off a flat bottom pan. it acts as a spatula but has a dish towards the back that allows you to scoop the cooked vegetables into a serving dish.

One of my Mora 106's on a leather strop that i made today from a cut of leather that Dad used for walls of the baby crib that all us kids spent time in. I usually use an 8000 waterstone for honing, but the strop is nice to have in the kit.

Today, I received a special package in the mail from dad containing a few sections of the Lodi apple tree he pruned back on the farm this week. This tree was planted when i was a toddler and has produced apples for 40 years. it's one of dad's favorite things.

hummingbird spoon

this is kind of personal, but I don't really care anymore.

my best spoon, made a few weeks ago from curbside tree trimmings. the handle is so delicate. it is absurd!

I don't care, because i think about this spoon, with its fairly large bowl, and its diminutive handle, and how someone who's older and needs to be fed, how what is in the bowl of that spoon might be all they can handle today. a delicate handle for the spoon fosters delicate movement towards your mom's mouth, feeding her broth as she tries to fathom what has happened and why she is not able to get out of bed.

This is where the hummingbird spoon rests in the lavender bath. hope she's happy

jasmine from my trellis adorning a bronze head that uncle michael cast 'bout 20 years ago. dad's satellite sep bolt and uncle chris's laguiolle knife with ebony handle

a self portrait from a few months back

a few color/texture tests. i like them on the bedroom door. not much of anything but a decent hello

A design for a kinetic scultpure that looks like a flower and a propeller at the same time. but it would spin on an axis with some kind of bearing race. not quite a windmill, and not quite an airplane propeller, but at least understanding of Bernoulli's principle

The Sack-Back chair that i made in Curtis Buchannan's studio 2 years ago

another self portrait, at around: too early in the morning to be waking up

It is a rock, but a body worker gave this to me years ago as a heart health sentiment, because it does indeed look like a big strong, juicy heart and it does kind of look like mine in a way

salad service in maple and and a soups poon in local whatever-wood

I woke up thursday morning this week and decided to do a self portrait.

This weekend, i set forth on making a salad service set from some maple offcut that Lawrence Gandsey gave me. Not sure about the "fork". one could charitably say it evokes tulips but i think you could also say it evokes bart simpson.

Also had one last piece of street-side wood from urban pruning. this one's eating size

The maple is pretty hard to carve with my gouges and sloyd knives, so i bandsaw "blanks" and then beaver out the bowl with a forstner bit in a hand drill. good labor saver

i pencil in different "finger" patterns for the fork. still figuring this out.

spoon oops

tried to make a ladle from a thick piece of alder that my pop sent me years ago. the grain is fairly predictable but it got a little squirrelly and i misjudged how deep i was cutting with the hook knife. sliced right through the bowl in that one area. I've done this before a few times. at least i got a few more spoons left from this stick of alder.

a lot of advice out there says to carve the outside of the bowl first before beavering out the inside. I think it might depend a lot on whether the wood is green or not? i'm having more success with spoons where i get the inside of the bowl cleaned up before proceeding to the outside.

hmm

more spoons from curbside wood

A couple spoons today from the spare limbs that i found earlier this week from some curbside tree trimming. what struck me today and

the branches had natural crooks in them. this is the layout approach taken. not following any strict pattern aside from applying the natural bend in the tree to establish the crank in the spoon.

Some folks like to carve out the outside of the bowl BEFORE cutting the inside. i've tried both today and have to say that making the bowl first is a bit easier for my process. i think it has to do with having the wood as a billet underneath which makes it more easy to clamp to my knee bench with the rope-holddown. i then find it easier to pare away the outside of the bowl afterwards, using stop-cuts and just carefully paring away with a very sharp chisel.

here, i use the back of my gouge to check symmetry of the bowl

i'm establishing the overall shape of the spoon here. the grain kind of tells you what the shape of the handle should be. following the grain reminds me so much of shaping oak chair spindles in Jonesborough, Tennessee.

carving spoons from a recently limbed street tree

while on my morning jog today, i found this limbed tree near my house with a few promising branches. i don't know what the species is, but the limbs looked pretty fresh. so after returning home from the run, i rolled out on my bicycle with my ryoba saw to cut a few useful sections for spoon carving. i wish i snapped a shot of the tree and it's leaves. it's actually a pretty nice carving wood in green.

My first spoon from the wood was not so well planned, as it had the pith running through the handle. good practice tho.

this other spoon i made today originates from a crook in one of the branches where there was a bifurcation off the leader branch. the fibers all run collinear with the crank in the spoon. it's something i have not had a lot of experience with, carving directly from the tree, but for me i receive good feedback from the grain in the wood to "tell" my knife where to go. this also means you can't just apply a "spoon template" to the wood and force it to obey the lines. you have to flow with it and let the spoon emerge from the wood. believe me: hours can pass in the blink of an eye while engaged in this work.

got a few cuts on my thumbs over the past few weeks, so today i'm applying some athletic tape to just add a little extra protection. it's helpful.

the new kuska knife made short work of this green wood. with both edges of the hook being sharp, it has numerous hand positioning and force direction possibilities. i'm still learning this tool, but so far, very happy to have it in my kit

The rest of the photos are just showing the roughing out of these pieces.

a soup ladle in poplar

had a few thick billets of poplar from my bed project. i thought, being poplar, that it'd be super easy to carve, but it was much harder than what i expected. possibly due to being so dry?

i used a 3/8" forstner bit with my drill to hog out most of the bowl. here, i'm using a long-handled hook knife (used with two hands).

From here on, it's small refinements getting this spoon to its final shape.

----f

Marc, my neighbor, brought a spoon he carved from apricot wood decades a few decades ago when he was in NM.