What I Did on Summer Vacation 2020

On Friday I got home from my place near Rib Lake, Wisconsin. Since the autumnal equinox happened during the last few days of the trip, technically we can call it a late-summer visit to the woods. Temperatures were warm for September. A few nights were cool enough that I was comfortable inside my shack with a fire in the stove, but most nights were fine to sleep outside in the hammock.

Despite the warm temperatures, the sun was no longer high in the sky, as in July. Daylight hours are shorter, and the leaves turned color while I was there. Early on there were patchy bits of color here and there:

. . . but by the time I left we had sights like

Video: Roughing out Spoons at the Bench

I made a video showing my vise, chisel, hammer method of roughing out spoon blanks. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT7PdrXYYOI

More Adventures in Workholding

I've been working on a change to my spoon-carving process, scooping out the bowl earlier in the process with the blank held by a clamp rather than in my hand. 

I tried it out with this tiny salt spoon, made from

Spoon Blanks by Hammer and Chisel (Without a Hatchet!)

Unrefined spoons, just captured in the wilds of northern Wisconsin!

Let's say you have

Video Worth Watching: Wille Sundqvist on YouTube

My teacher Drew Langsner has posted a video I love on YouTube. On several of my visits to Country Workshops, I have watched this on a VHS copy Drew has in the shop's video library. 

This is basically raw, unedited footage made in 1982 by Rick Mastelli for a projected video by Taunton Press. For reasons I don't know, the project wasn't completed. I believe several black and white stills from these sessions were used in a Fine Woodworking article on the basic knife grasps.

I assume this was Wille's second trip to the U.S., when he taught the first spoon and bowl course at Country Workshops. Here you see a craftsman at the height of his powers, working in a new environment and explaining what he's doing and why in his second (third?) language. Clearly he's a master of both the work and teaching it.

Along with Wille's book, Swedish Carving Techniques, and the later Taunton video by his son Jögge, this video will give anyone interested in carving with hand tools, beginner or more advanced, plenty of food for thought. I still have new "aha" moments every time I look these over. Wonderful "ahas" I feel not just in the brain, but in the hands: one of life's great pleasures!

More Spoon Carving: Red Maple Serving Spoons

Here are photos of two spoons I made at my

Carving Spoons

Here are a few spoons I've completed recently. Most have some areas that are sanded, many have some areas that are knife-finished. One thing I'm learning is that even if I plan to sand the spoon, sanding time is cut way down if I do some careful finishing knife work after the spoon is thoroughly dry. (I guess I assume you know that it's easiest to do most of the carving while the wood is as wet as possible).

All of these spoons are finished with raw flax oil.

The spoons pictured are spoken for by their new owners. Others will be available in the weeks to come; watch this blog for news on that.

Drying Wood in the Microwave: or, the Cursed Spoon

Three rounds of 30-second exposures in the microwave oven, with a few minutes outside in between to cool off, will dry most spoons enough to be ready for finish sanding and oiling. And that would have worked for this spoon too! But nothing about this spoon was easy. It probably shouldn't even exist. It resisted being created at almost every step of the way. And I refused to listen.

Hanging on to Christmas Fun

I was afraid my spoon blanks would dry out before I got to them, which is why I was storing them in a plastic bag full of chips from the carving process. Then I was afraid that fungus would get working on the blanks before I got them finished up, so I decided to wrap them in plastic and freeze them. The idea is that if the wood is below freezing temperature, the fungus will at least slow down until I can carve the wood. Those little white packages, lower left in my freezer, are my spoon blanks:

Will this work? I don't know, it's an experiment. I think it probably will. I know that wood can dry out while frozen (water can sublimate). Hopefully, double-wrapping the blanks in plastic will keep enough water in the wood to be easy to carve, while being frozen will slow the fungus down enough so I won't be working spalted wood (unless I want to, of course).

I'll keep you posted!

Spoons in January

From this:

To this:

In just a couple of hours.  Making spoons out of wood you cut down yourself is about as close to instant gratification as you find in a woodworking project.