rodtermaat

Here is a picture of 2 eating spoons.

There is a Buckthorn copy of my favorite spoon carved by frank.  It is a sad imitation, but each time I carve one it gets better.  I looked for a picture of it to share, but of course cannot find one.  I will snap a few pics tomorrow.

The second is a vertical grain spoon carved out of spalted Cherry.  This was a spoon blank from Yuri.  He made these for teaching at the Traditional Ways Gathering.  It carved nice, but felt weak in the handle.  I soaked it in walnut oil for a few days and the process firmed it up nicely.

I would certainly recommend this technique for beginners and for making up several spoons blanks that are identical.  There are some real benefits to having all the students carving the same basic spoon.

To create these blanks you split a short log into pie sections so that the individual blanks almost have vertical grain.  You will need at least a 6 inch diameter and seem to get diminishing returns after about 10 inches.  Work for sections that are 1 inch thick on the outside.  I have a log I plan to pie into sections that I will post pictures of in a later post.