Beech serving spoon

I've been all about the larger spoons recently. This one is from a very dry crooked piece I got from an ancient beech taken down due to it becoming unstable. One of the thing I love about making objects like spoons from wood is giving purpose and life to material that might have just ended up in the fireplace.

Purple plum wedding spoon

A colleague is attending a friend's wedding and commissioned me to make a serving spoon as her gift to the happy couple. Here's the finished product, carved from locally felled purple plum:

Almost a Dozen

Got down to some serious carving over the weekend. I axed out the spoons on Saturday (and a couple extra on Sunday), used the knife to smarten up the handles and the underside of the bowls yesterday and today I used the twca cam to hollow out the bowls. There were a few hiccups along the way and a few minor adjustments to make, but I'm really happy to have been able to be as productive as I have.

Axed out spoons ready for knife work

Sharpening in the sunshine

Some of my tools were starting to get a little dull, so I've spent most of the morning putting an edge back on them. I use sandpaper wrapped around wood working through 150, 320, 600 and 1000 grit before a final strop using autosol as the honing compound. Not all my tools needed all the grits, for example, the Nic Westermann chip carving knife only needed the 1000 grit and stropping

Axing spoons

Today's weather was extremely changeable. After roughly finishing two spoons (another two were failures - an unexpected knot and a too thin bowl) I decided to concentrate on just the axe work as I could do the rest indoors. I'll finish them off tomorrow.

Rowan salad servers

Sold

For sale £35 for the pair, free postage within the UK, email me for a postage quote if you want them delivered outside the UK.
Payment via PayPal.

thomas_luke@hotmail.com

Finished spoons

The spoons are a mix of Rowan, holly, birch and aspen, soaked in linseed (flaxseed) oil overnight to seal them. Sealing spoons with oil is optional, as they will develop their own patina through use.