wooden spoon – beginning to almost end

11 May 2014 1 Comment

by Stephanie (Curiositykt) in Usables Tags: , ,

 

This has been a long process (mostly due to weather), and I’ve only gotten one spoon thus far, but I figured including all the pictures would be a way to show the process.

So I started out with a slightly warped Cherry turning block, which I cut in half, and then in half again horizontally, making 4 spoon sized blanks. On these I sketched the design:

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From there I started to remove the wood, using some cheap gouges I had bought on amazon. It was a very slow and painful process:

 

 

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So I started to look at my options, cut by band-saw, rough out using a hatchet, whittle or gouge. The rest of this page follows the gouged one. I’m going to probably start working on finishing the other three at some point in the near future as my new knives (flexcut) and gouges (Lee Valley) are significantly better.

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Taking the one on the far right above, I then used my knives to finish roughing it out:

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I then used the new gouges to make it pretty and thin. Today I sanded it down and used a tack cloth to remove the saw dust. I forgot how magical tack cloths are.

 

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It still has a few nicks that became apparent when I got the saw dust off, so it’ll have to be be sanded a bit more in those spots. Also I can’t figure out how to sand the inside of the bowl.

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But it is certainly spoon shaped and theoretically could be used to eat from right now! Though washing it would be a real pain with that rough wood in the bowl.

 

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Spoon progress

17 Nov 2013 Leave a comment

by Stephanie (Curiositykt) in Usables Tags: , , , ,

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Four attempts of  “cutting out” from left to right: Band saw, hatchet, knife and gouges. By far I have the most control with the gouges, and now that I have better gouges I can make a fair amount of progress in a short time, but it’s still a very slow process.

The knife lead to a more smooth process, though still very very slowly, though this was before I had managed to get the knife sharpened properly!

The hatchet was a pretty good option, reasonably fast, reasonably accurate, and it leaves the edges choppy, which makes it easier to carve it later into the final shape.

And by far the fastest is the bandsaw. That took about 3 minutes. But it wasn’t as accurate and and it will be harder to carve I suspect, though I haven’t tried yet.

 

Spoon progress – hatchets help

20 Oct 2013 Leave a comment

by Stephanie (Curiositykt) in Usables Tags: , , , ,

So today I took out the hatchet, also some leather to protect my leg, and more puncture proof gloves. And it helped a great deal. I actually ended up using the side of the garden box as a steadying surface, with the leather protecting it. I managed to get off most of the wood, now I need to make some decisions regarding the bowl and the handle.

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Spoon progress

19 Oct 2013 Leave a comment

by Stephanie (Curiositykt) in Usables Tags: , , ,

So I got some cherry turning wood from woodcraft, and used a terribly dull band saw to cut it in half (See blackening on the back).

Then I drew on the shape I wanted to rough out:

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Then using a wood carving knife from my deceased grandfather (Along with his sharpening stone) I started to rough it out. This didn’t go so well, so I switched to my Niji set which are way too small for wood this dense, but I did eventually make some progress. And along the way I snapped one v-blade and pretty much dulled all the gouges, and somewhat successfully resharpened them. After about 2 hours of work I ended up with this:

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So I asked around and was told of the marvels of hatchets for roughing out work. So I went to sears and got a sportsman’s axe We’ll see how that performs tomorrow. I’m a little scared it’s going to take off way too much wood. I also got a new pair of leather gloves as apparently mechanics gloves don’t have leather in the spots where I keep stabbing myself. (Which includes my right thigh, the new gloves won’t help with that)