A Spoon Rack for (some of) My Spoons

I made this rack out of some pine.  I just drilled 1-inch holes for the spoons (3/4 inch holes at the far ends for little spoons).  It does free up some counter space by getting the spoons out of the crock, but the main reason I like it is because now I can see 41 of my spoons all at once, and I get nice comments from guests.  The rack is about 4 1/2 feet long.  My wife wanted it to be 6 feet long, but I said that would be excessive.  Now that it is done and hung up, I think 6 feet would be nice.  And it would hold more spoons.

stuff I have finally finished

I finished a bunch of spoons and a few spreaders during the last couple of weeks.  These are pieces that I started ages ago and that have been sitting around in various stages of completion. I had them in boxes and bags and on shelves, etc.  They were everywhere.  I was a little mortified when I started to gather them into one place and saw how many there were.  I still have others in bags sitting around waiting.

These two here are maple, and I love the way these designs fit my mouth.  I stained these in cocoa water for variety, but they only got a few shades darker than normal.

These four are also maple, but I stained them with brown food coloring.  I love the deeper color!  I just got some food coloring at the store and mixed it with water and some vinegar, according to some instructions I found on the internet.

This is a monster big maple spoon.  I made this because the wood told me to.  There was a spot in the maple where the grain was bowl-shaped, so I had to make a spoon out of it.  The luster is quite nice and it is fun to cook with.

This is a little maple eating spoon with an ebonized handle.  I dipped the handle in some tea to make sure it had lots of tannins in it, then I dipped it in an iron acetate solution that I made with baling wire and vinegar.  That turns it nice and black.

These three get their picture taken together because they were all early attempts and eating spoons that did not work that well.  They looked nice, but they did not feel nice in my mouth.  Now that I have learned a lot more about spoon design, I decided to remake them.  I cut them down some, mostly on the sides of the bowl.  I made the sides of the bowl curved down (if you are looking from the side of the spoon) so that the bowl of the spoon isn't so deep that your top lip can't touch the bottom of the bowl and I did some other small adjustments with the handles.  Then I put some notches in the handles on two of them to add some visual interest.  I am rather pleased with the improvement.

 

And finally, these are some spreaders that I made for funsies.  Maple and walnut.  Walnut looks so good but it is such a pain to sand.

What we have on hand

I really enjoy using wood that I can scrounge or gather locally. I do carry a saw and sometimes a hatchet in the car with me, because you never know when an opportunity will arise. Since I moved back to the desert, I have been getting aquainted with mesquite, citrus wood, arizona sycamore, arizona cypress, bottlebrush, olive, and various other native and transplanted woods. I was really missing the birch that I had almost unlimited access to before the move, and I still do, but I am really enjoying the process of discovery with these other woods. The differences in texture, grain patterns, hardness, toughness, and especially how they feel and smell is an experience that I really do savor.
When in a thoughtful mood, I see parallels between this hobby of mine and the rest of life. There really is value in working with the things and people that are already around us. So often, I want to import solutions to the problem at hand. The risk is that I miss out on and discard the things and people that are right here, in favor of something more exotic and perhaps less suited to my environment.

Bigger and Better Spellicans (or maybe Spillikins)

I have made a lot of spellicans in the last several of months.  As you might be able to tell from these photos, I have started making them larger.  Most of these are pine.  I guess I got tired of using only scraps and being constrained by the size and shape of the leftover wood.  So I cut and carved these from non-leftover pine.  These are some of my favorites.  I made one tiki head and I liked it so much that I had to make some more.  The others are just plain fun.  Why the spoon, you may ask?  Well, I got some wood from a friend - Arizona Cypress.  I carved the spoon out of it, but the wood is far too aromatic to put in your mouth.  So it is now a toy.

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.