I've Returned, Arguing with the Band Saw, and Carving Spoons

Hello Everyone,

I'm baaack!

I hope you all had a good August and if you have wood shop, you got lots of work done. I recovered from some surgery and I'm happy to report I'm fit and ready to resume work.

Which I was eagerly anticipating doing. I was making some spoon patterns out of some 3/4" thick plywood on the band saw the other day when BOOM! the blade broke. We went through this in spring and it turned out to be a worn bearing. This time it's another worn bearing and worn tires on the wheels both of which are fixable. But the wheels have never exactly lined up properly and I think this is causing the blade not to track properly when the wheels spin. So I'm off to find some bushings for it. Stay tuned for more about that.

As the band saw is a critical piece of equipment, I won't be able to cut out any turning blanks and the spoon blanks I make I'll have to cut by hand. Survivable but it will slow me down a bit. :(

I have been carving a lot of spoons and those have gone very well. I bought a large gouge and that has really made short work of hollowing out the spoon bowl. I also invested in a set of curved cabinet scrapers which was one of the smarter things I've done this year and those have proven invaluable with regards to smoothing the spoon bowl and handle.

Here's some photos:

I got a whole set of these for about $20 and it was money well spent. These really smooth off carved surfaces without softening any surface carving. And they're easy to sharpen as well:

And here are a couple of kitchen spoons out of red birch. I'm also using American cherry and black walnut, all of which are very carvable and readily available:

Here is a coffee scoop out of hickory, which is carvable with that big gouge I bought:

And here is a coffee scoop out of cherry:

Ok, I'm going to go and tackle the band saw. When I'm done with that, I have some sugar maple and some hickory planks to turn and I also have more red birch and some more cherry for spoons.

Stay tuned and keep everyone that has been affected by the recent hurricanes here in the US in your thoughts.

VW