Carving a Spoon for Margaret & Dennis-completion photos and other musings

Hi Everyone,

Well I decided to spend the day doing what I love most, other than being with family, carving spoons and I've finished Margaret and Dennis' spoons:

Notes on carving eugenia wood-well the wood is softer when it's unseasoned and so I was able to carve both spoons without any trouble but as the surface dried out, it became hard and more challenging so I would probably avoid dried eugenia in the future. This particular branch had a lot of little twigs developing inside of it and that proved a bit challenging to carve. Keeping my tools sharp helped with that. It is amenable to shaving and filing (see below) so finishing worked out fine. And I've oiled both spoons with flax seed oil which gives the spoons a pale gold color.

Here are the completion photos:

Here is the spoon when I picked it up this morning. I worked on the handle last evening and got the basic shape done. You can see it's in pretty rough shape:

 

I kept working on the handle. I used the scraper in the photo to begin smoothing the surface and I find that I really like using scrapers on spoons. They not only make short work of tooling marks but they allow for fine shaping without the hazards of using a knife, which can tear the fibers especially in wood with challenging grain or knots:

In this photo you can see some curved scrapers which I used for smoothing the inside of the spoon bowl. Much easier than sand paper and not as fatiguing to use:

This is the back of the handle. I like to create strong handles so the spoon is easier to use:

This photo shows the back side of the spoon bowl after I took it down to the bandsaw and cut off some of the excess wood. It's ready for more fine shaping:

 This is the bowl after I shaped it with my carpenter's chisel:

And here is the back of the bowl after I've scraped it with the scrapers. I also got dive bombed by a lot of bees. There are a lot of flowering lilacs and ornamental trees blooming right now and this has attracted a bazillion insects, including a very large bumble bee the size of a grapefruit whom I've named Bob. Bob emits a very loud hum and he seems to enjoy scaring the hell out of me by dive bombing my head. I get out of his way when I see him coming:

After some finish sanding and scraping this is the completed heavy duty kitchen spoon:

And here are both of them with Burr Bunny off at the side:

As these spoons are traveling to a warmer and drier climate than the one I'm in, I'm going to let the spoons dry out for several days before I send them on to Margaret and Dennis. I hope these are the beginnings of many happy meals with their families.

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Ok, what's next-since the band saw is running I'm going to cut out some smaller serving bowls and I'll do blog postings about that. 

Thanks for joining me on this project. 

And Happy Mother's Day!

More later,

VW