more scraps mean more spellicans

I have been busy with scraps.  Check it out.  I'm up to 152 completed spellicans, with about 30 more cut out waiting to be carved.  But I don't have a problem.  I can stop any time I want.

Christmas tree

 How lovely are thy branches, Christmas tree!  The problem is, our tree isn't big enough for all of our ornaments any more.  And, being the daddy and a really nice guy, I leave my ornaments off so the kids will have room for theirs.  So I made a little wooden tree to hang more ornaments on.  Here it is.  I made the branches out of inexpensive pine 1x2 and it all stacks on a 5/8 inch dowel.  One of the best parts - everything but the dowel was scrap from other projects.

Olive wood spoons

I got some very fresh olive wood from my cousin, so I made some spoons.  The two things I can tell you about olive wood:
It smells amazing when it is fresh and you carve it.  I can hardly describe it.  It's the smell of deep summer - like grass and overripe fruit and I don't know what else.  All I can say is, if you come across some fresh olive wood, cut it open and smell it.
It is really hard once it is dry.  I carved the spoons green but finished them after they dried.  I had to strop my Erik Frost Mora knife after carving it dry.  More correctly, Laughter stropped it for me. 
I love the shape of the longest one.  There was a natural curve in the grain so I took advantage of it.  Now I understand why so many people are in love with carving real green wood.

What to do with scraps

I have a lot of scrap pieces of wood sitting around.  Not big enough for spoons, too big to throw away.  The only thing I can do is burn them, which is lame when you live in a warm climate and never build fires.  But I was in my favorite store, Bookmans, looking at chess books, and I saw a book about games.  And there, in the book, was the perfect idea for turning those scraps into something cool.

Have you ever heard of spellicans?  Neither had I.  Apparently, it was a parlor game in the Victorian age.  It's like pick-up sticks, but the pieces are cool shapes, and you get different points for different shapes.  Here are some pictures from the internet.

They were carved from bone or ivory.  Pretty elaborate and fancy.  You can't tell from the pictures, but those pieces are only about 4 inches tall.

So I figured I could make a similar game with my scraps, but not quite so delicate and fancy.  Here is my attempt.

The pieces are all about 5 to 6 inches long.  The kids have played the game 3 or 4 times in the two days since I made them, and the pieces work well.  Of course, I have another 10 pieces started already, so the set will be bigger soon.  It may prove to be an addictive way to deal with scrap wood.

prepping spoon blanks

I prepped a whole bunch of spoon blanks today for carving.  For funsies, I photographed the process.

I turned this

into this

and this

Then I marked the sides

and cut them

Then I shaped the back of the bowl with my disc sander

And now they are soaking for carving.

spoons like to party!

Ever wonder what to do with your spoons after you carve them?  Well, you can pose them, artistically scattered on the floor.

Or you can stack them.

Cherry Spoons

I have a friend from worker who does ceramics on the side.  She does nice work, so I asked her to make me a set of 10 drinking cups.  She asked for cherry spoons.  Here are the spoons.  I will post pictures of the great cups she made when my camera cooperates.

This is the first time I have worked with cherry wood.  It is awfully pretty, but not quite as strong or predictable as maple.  The grain is more predictable in maple than in cherry.  The maple is harder, too, so the cherry was a lot easier to carve.

wet wood chemistry

I put three spoon blanks in the sink to soak and they made the water green! One walnut, one cherry, one maple. Cold water, soaking for 2 days. Here are some pictures to attempt to show you.

I do not know how it ended up green, as I have boiled and soaked these woods before. I don't think I ever put all three together, though. I wish I knew more about what is going on here.

second thoughts about stirring sticks

As I was looking at pictures of interesting wooden utensils a while ago, I happened upon this picture of a stirring stick from Ghana.

Now, you may recall that I posted about stirring sticks a while ago, saying that they aren't all that useful, so you probably shouldn't make them unless you have scrap wood that is too skinny to make anything else.  But I saw this stick and I loved it.  I mean, look at that interesting shape.  Look at the knife marks still on it.  Look at the simplicity of it.  So I decided to make some of my own.

I made this first one from a branch of cypress that I pruned off of a tree in our front yard.  When I asked my 6-year-old girl what improvements I could make on it, she told me to get rid of the warts.  So I told her that those are little knots, not warts, and they won't come off.  Besides, I kind of like them.

This second stick is made from maple.  I tried hard to make it look like it did not come from a flat boring piece of wood.

The best sandpaper and the shape of a spoon handle

This post has two purposes: to show you evidence of the best sandpaper ever and to show you the shape of a pretty spoon handle.  First, look at the before photos and notice the knife marks.  Then look at the after photos to see how my Norton 3X sandpaper took off the knife marks in 3 minutes of sanding.  That is fast!  Finally, feel free to appreciate the shape of the handle.  I don't have much to say about the shape of it now, other than the fact that it looks really good and it feels great in my hand.  It feels nicer to hold than a regular cylinder shape.

Three "before" photos:

Three "after" photos:

It isn't just the fact that the sandpaper was 80 grit that made it fast.  All of the grits of Norton 3X that I use are fast.  They are faster than other kinds, and they last a lot longer.  I am not exaggerating when I say that the sandpaper has changed my approach to sanding.  I no longer hate it as much as I did, and I can use the 80 grit to do the last shaping of my pieces because it is so fast.  Where I would have to use a knife very carefully before to get that last hairbreadth of material off, I can now use my sandpaper and it is almost as fast and a lot less likely to take off too much material.

An odd thing. A very odd thing.

As I was going through wood stuff a little while ago, I found all kinds of weird things.  I found old projects that I should have finished by now and old projects that I should have never started.  And then I found something even weirder.  Now, look at this.  It is just a boring little bowl carved out of bass wood.

Laughter carved this at my house several years ago when he was bored.  Pretty round, especially considering that it was done by hand with a knife

Now we turn it over and see the weird part.  The boring bowl appears to have grown a head.

The face was carved by me, several years ago plus a few, when I was trying my hand at carving faces.  (I gave it up because it is too hard and not that great looking when it's done.)  Why is the head sticking out of the bottom of a bowl?  Well, I carved it on a piece of bass wood, and when Laughter was at my house looking for a piece of wood to carve, that is all I had.  So he carved on it, but didn't want to carve the semi-decent face off, so he left it on while he made the bowl.

The lesson to be learned from this?  Make sure you have plenty of wood for your guests to carve, or you may end up with a bizarre thing like this hanging out in your wood stacks for years.

Atlatls are awesome and alliteration are awesome also

Before you can make a wooden spoon, you need something to eat with that spoon.  How do you get something to eat?  You kill it with a spear.  And how do you throw that spear?  With your atlatl, of course.

I made this atlatl ages ago.  It is made of pine, so it is not terribly strong.  Perhaps I should make one of maple for when I need to hunt for survival.  And maybe Laughter will loan me a knife for skinning my prey.

a little rough carpentry

Some days are for researching and sketching and designing.  Other days are for sanding.  Then some days are for cutting things out or banging with a gouge and mallet.  Others are for carving pretty handles.  And then some days you just need to go to the scrap lumber stack and make a bike ramp for your boys because they have been bugging you about it for weeks.

Six spoons a-soaking

Yeah, that should be enough for this weekend.

Quilted maple is pretty!

Quilted maple is pretty, but it is horrible to carve with that wavy grain.  So these were done mostly with power tools.  I had to carve the bowls of the spoons sideways, across the grain.