Spoon Carver’s Blog

Often while I am carving, I want to tell someone about the spoon. How it takes on a character of it's own, or how a mistake became something beautiful. That is what this blog is for. Welcome!

More on Baby Spoons

Thursday, October 23, 2008

I am excited about these spoons! I’ve been taking a few more photos of them today so I can display them better in the galleries. Most of them are sold already, and a few of them are on display in the Spoon Gallery. The two that are left are on the Spoons for Sale page.

This is a photo of a gift I am sending to my girlfriend.

I have a love/hate relationship with this spoon. This is the one that I first thought was ugly with it’s streaks. It isn’t like the other Bird’s Eye Maple spoon I made which has beautiful rays. But the more I look at this spoon, the more I love it and find it beautiful and intriguing. It has risen to be one of my favorite of the baby spoons I made this past month.

Baby Spoon Mania!

Friday, October 17, 2008

During the month of September I had been working on an order for 3 baby spoons. The thing is, I had so much fun with it that I kept going…

The order was for three spoons. I have 7 baby spoons finished and three regular soup spoons. My plan is to give the commissioner an option of what three she would like, then I’ll put the others up for sale. Or give one or two away to girlfriends who have recently had babies.

Starting on the left is a spoon made of Redwood. This was my first time using Redwood, and I loved it! It is easy to use and has such a beautiful streaked grain. The spoon is on the shorter side, 5 inches long, but has a nice handle to hold.

Going clockwise is a Bird’s Eye Maple spoon. I received the wood from my old neighbour in Canada. It’s about 6 inches long.

Then comes a Purple heart spoon. I really enjoy the looks of this one. It’s also 6 inches long and has a nice curve at the end of the handle.

The fourth spoon from the left is made of Bloodwood, my current favorite for eating spoons. It has a zig-zag handle.

On the far right is another piece of Bird’s Eye Maple spoon. It’s a bit long than the other. It comes from some extra trim from my parents house. It is beautiful and ugly at the same time. There are a lot of light and dark streaks in it that I can’t help but love but it also looks ugly.

The bottom right is a Cherry spoon. I tried to make the handle a little fancier. I love how it turned out, especially as my first time carving a scroll shape. It isn’t as easy to hold as the other spoons, but after using it a few times, I’m sure it will come naturally.

The last spoon, on the bottom left is another Bloodwood spoon. It is also a short spoon, the shortest of the set. But it is the length of many baby spoons. The fat handle is nice to hold, and will be a good spoon for babies as they learn to navigate a spoon to their mouth.

Doing this project has definitely confirmed for me that I would love to specialize in spoons to eat with. I enjoy good solid working spoons to, but it is the spoons to eat with that delight me.

I may start to specialize some day, but at the moment I am working on an order for mixing spoons. I have two more orders to fill. One is for 6 soup spoons! The other is for 3 mixing spoons from a new wood. I am excited to see how they all turn out.

Danby Hardwoods

Friday, October 17, 2008

I finally had to push myself to find a local hardwood dealer. I have a project to make 3 mixing spoons similar to “Annelie’s Spoon” (in the Spoon Gallery) out of walnut wood. I have a quite a bit of walnut wood, but I know that it will be hard to get three spoons to look a like because the pieces are smaller and twisty. I left the project to the last minute possible, because I am shy about going to new places. But I had filled all my other orders, and it was time to see what I could find.

Oh boy! I wish I had not played shy and hunted earlier! After checking at the closest lumber yard that I could find, and confirming that they only sell soft woods for building, I drove out to Danby to see what kind of place “Danby Hardwoods” was.

They are better than I was hoping! It seems they have all the most used US hardwoods, as well as some exotic hardwoods that I have been using. They had a lot of walnut wood for me to sift through. I was even able to get a few pieces cheaper because there was a quite a bit of sap wood on the board.

I do not know the details, but I think the owners are craftsman who sell wood on the side. One makes beautifully turned bowls and the other makes beautiful tables out of a variety of woods.

I look forward to giving them my business in the future!

New York State Fair

Saturday, August 30, 2008

My husband and I went to the New York State Fair last Sunday. We’ve never been to a state fair before and wanted to see how they compared to regular county or town fairs. We are not really fond of carnival rides. We could do with out the masses of people and abundance of noise. Even so, we enjoyed it quite well.

The parts that we really enjoyed were the exhibits. It was too bad that it was “moving day” for the 4-H groups, so most of their displays were being packed up so other counties could put theirs up. I guess they do about 17 counties every 4 days.

We really enjoyed the antique exhibits. The log cabin, wool making, soap making, and candle making too, I think. Just about everything. My favorite parts were the two exhibits dealing with wood. One group was displaying how to use an antique lathe. One man was a furniture maker and was talking about how he knows when a chair is his by looking at the design of the spindles.

Two men were wearing fun, cowboy style hats. It was a good 15 minutes or more before I realized that they were made of wood!

My very favorite exhibit was of Nick Nichols’ Tool Chest of antique tools. We watched as he described planes and the uses of different planes he had. He did well at keeping everyone interested and telling stories as he explained things. When he was finished he said to ask questions if we had any. I stuck around because I noticed that he had a bowl of spoons.

I hadn’t thought very hard about what I wanted to ask. He was kind and gave me a short demo on how he makes his spoons. He used a draw knife and shaving horse for the body and shape of the spoon, and a hook knife, like I use, to carve out the bowl.

It was just a quick demo. I have been thinking about it ever since. I have so many questions I want to ask him. I wish I would have taken more time to really look good at his tools and learn more about his methods. Using a draw knife and a shaving horse seems so practical to me, especially to save wear on a person’s wrists.

I don’t have more to say about it, but my mind is thinking hard…

My First Spoon

Monday, August 18, 2008

My First Spoon

I carved my first spoon in 2004. My husband, David, and I had been married for just 5 months and were living with his parents as we were in the middle of a move from Canada to where ever David could get a job. There wasn’t a whole lot for me to do while we were there. One day we were walking by a lake and I saw a pile of wood by the water. I thought randomly that maybe I should learn to carve. I mentioned it to David and his response was, “I’ll give you my pocket knife.”

I don’t know where the thought to carve came from. I think I read it in a book when I was younger. I have a vague memory of reading in a story book about a child’s grandfather who could take a piece of wood and with the use of a knife and make it into anything he wanted. I think the idea of it stuck in my mind and has always fascinated me.

So when David and I chatted about it briefly by the lake, I thought, “Why not? I don’t have anything else to do.”

So why a spoon? Well, as I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve always loved spoons. When I was thinking what I should carve, I had this vague remembrance that the grandfather in the book carved horses. I knew I would never be able to pull that off. Maybe someday, but not on my first shot. So I scrambled my brain for an easy object that I could copy. Spoons came quickly to my mind. I thought, “A circle on a stick can’t be that hard.”

It was my father-in-law who asked me how I was going to hollow out my bowl. I hadn’t thought that far yet. I was still working away at cutting the wood down with a set of fake exacto knives. (David’s pocket knife wasn’t sharp enough.) David and I went to a surplus store and bought a small set of chisels. They were not very sharp, so my father-in-law sharpened them for me on the grinder.

Being my first spoon, I rejected the idea of roughing it out first on a band saw. It took me a week of steady work to carve the spoon to where I was happy with it. In the process I had neglected to follow my father-in-law’s good advice about keeping my hands behind the blades and I gave myself a good cut with the knife. I was determined to finish the spoon though, and I did. I left a bit of the log attached so I could remember how much I chiseled out by hand. I didn’t sand it because I wanted to know what it felt like to do something out of wood with just a knife.

I now keep the spoon by my carving chair so I can show it off to visitors.

Next Posts→