Dumb spoon questions

[ForgeCorvus]

Hiya Guys
I've been playing at spoons, well first I had to make my own hook-knife......but thats another story.
If I can just ask all of you your opinions are?

My first question is this, which do you carve first the inside or the outside and why?

Second, how do you hold it? as the nearer I get to the finshed shape the harder I find it to hold (and still cut in a safe direction)

Third, I seem to keep making the bowls quite deep (great for shovelling sugar into your tea but not easy to use as a eating spoon) is this due to my technique being flawed, if so how can I stop it

I've got some apple prunings that seem to cut OK (they're about 1/2 seasoned and are stored outside) and some boards of some reddish wood that seems to just love the knife ( but won't split for toffee), I don't know what it is, as it was pallets from china before I recycled it, both of these work well for me.What do you personally think is the best wood to use? (out of all the timber that you've tried)

Answers on a post card please

 

[Dave Budd]

oh where to start?!

1) I carve the outyside roughly first and then hoillow out before finishing off the outside, all knife work: no sandpaper

2) in my hands, duh if I'm applying a lot of pressure coz it's a deep form or a hard wood then I sometimes rest the bowl on a block (more useually the arm of the chair I'm siting in)

3) don't carve so deep! One bonus of carving the outside first is that you can get the spoon the shape you want it and then carve the hollow to suit

4) I only carve British hardwoods since they are available green, which is when it is easiest to carve Birch is dead easy and can be carved just as well seasoned. Cherry is very nice too. I think for aesthetic value (and robustness in use) I like hawthorn best.

 

[DoctorSpoon]

I'm with you Dave on virtually all those points
1) exactly
2) I'm usually sat on the sofa so I'm totally hand-held
3) Like Dave said, but I wonder if this is also partly down to the shape of your hook knife - a tight curve tends to dig a deeper shape. If you made it yourself, you might think about opening up the shape a bit. Also, what's your grind?
4) English hardwood carved green here too. When we're teaching beginners we start them with alder, willow or poplar because they cut really easily either green or dry but still make a durable spoon. Birch is a great intermediary wood, it still carves easily green, but goes a bit harder dry so you can give it a good tooled finish a day or so after you first made it. This is what we use most for spoons to sell. Fruit woods and, like Dave said, hawthorn, are a bit more tricky because they are harder and dry even harder still but take a fantastic tooled finish and often have lovely grain patterns.

Happy whittling!
Nicola

 

[Dave Budd]

I give my student birch coz I've got so much the stuff Mind you, I've got to cut some willow this winter, so maybe I'll give that a try too. I don't have any polar in my woods thankfully (the only non-native species I have is a loitary laurel bush on death row ), but I've carved it in the past and it was nice and easy, as is sycamore but I don't know about durability?

 

[DoctorSpoon]

Sycamore works very much like birch and makes a sound spoon. We use it quite a bit because Robin uses it for turning. I forgot to mention lime, which is also superb. We get a lot of our wood from a tree surgeon who mostly works in Sheffield and lime is quite a common street tree. It is quite bland and pale looking, but works really well either green or dry and takes a good tooled finish.

 

[brancho]

I like hawthorn a lot I need to get some I think

Sycamore dries really hard sometimes and is a traditional material for spoons and bowls etc

If the apple is not fully seaoned give it a go but it may have dried too much use it as soon as you can I would say.

 

[ForgeCorvus]

Thanks all, keep it coming as I'm interested
The hook knife started out life as a small kitchen knife (the type that has a straight cutting edge and a down curved back) with a moulded plastic handle, I got it from work as we were moulding the handles, we use them as utility knives for trimming the mouldings, this one had been worn down quite a lot when I 'found' it in the skip. When new they have a flat grind across the whole width of the blade, this one now has a single bevel grind which is on the inside of the curve, the curve is tight (about 5/8 of an inch).

So that looks like the reason that my bowls end up so deep? Looks like I'll have to adapt one with a more open curve

The apple wood bark still shows green when you make a fresh cut so its not very seasoned at all, we've just cut a few branches off our silver birch so I think I might play with some of that

Dr S. You can get Lime? You lucky thing, if I remember right, it was used for carving printing blocks as it would take really fine work.

 

[robwolf]

try using gorse its quite soft when wet but as it dries it goes rock hard ,also alder is good but watch when you split the billet as it tends to twist but when finished you get a lovley reddy yellow colour and it doesnt need oilling as alder wood doesnt rot when wet

 

[Arth]

Doesn'y lime smell like sick when you put a chain saw to it? I cut a few lumps a while ago and had to stop because of the smell.

 

[SimonM]

How about ash. A fair sized tree has just been felled near us and left in situ so I might nip down and get a few branches.

Simon

 

[Dave Budd]

hard work, but carves ok. I wouldn't use it for anything I want to hold water for long as the liquid seeps through teh grain

There are many better things to use ash for though. Great for handles on tools, or legs for stools, bows, turnery, etc. The bark can be stripped off and used for containers or shingles maybe.

 

[SimonM]

Thanks Dave!

 

[Arth]

hard work, but carves ok. I wouldn't use it for anything I want to hold water for long as the liquid seeps through teh grain

There are many better things to use ash for though. Great for handles on tools, or legs for stools, bows, turnery, etc. The bark can be stripped off and used for containers or shingles maybe.

I use Ash, Elm etc for making goblets and cups completely waterproof if sealed with Danish oil.

 

[Dave Budd]

really? I've had a cup from ash that was soaked in raw linseed oil (didn't want to poison my mead ) and the outside got more wet as the evening wore on!

 

[Arth]

I've made a Elm cup for drinking mead. Worked all night (the things we do to test our craftmanship).
It might be the oil you are using. I use Rustings Danish oil* which is food safe and toy safe after 7 days of drying

* nothing to do with the company just a happy customer.

 

[Dave Budd]

could be the oil, mind you it should've been cured. I know raw linseed takes a while, but I think it was about 6 months before I trialed the cup properly

oh well, I'll stick to the birch one instead (currently stained due to the red wine that appeared in it as an offering to the gods )

 

[John Fenna]

Would it be OK to make acup for my Mother in law out of Yew or Laburnum?

 

[Toddy]

Here? Is Laburnum wood toxic to drink from ? I've just been given a laburnum wood quaich by a woodturner friend and I'd rather be sure it's safe before I fill it with malt..........

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Arth]

never used it before but it looks like it. Did you say the woodturner was your friend? http://www.the-tree.org.uk/BritishTrees/TreeGallery/laburnumc.htm

 

[DoctorSpoon]

Laburnum is perfectly safe. Robin has a reliable toxicology report on it and, whilst the flowers and seed pods are highly toxic, the wood isn't - you would have to eat several complete quaiches before you even started to feel poorly!
Nicola