Further spooning...

So, somehow I've found myself carving spoons, and here are a few pictures of the spoon-making process.  The tools I use aren't ideal, as in they're pretty cheap and not the ones I would necessarily choose if money were no object, however they are what I've got, so they are what I'll use.

This particular piece of willow had a side branch coming off it which meant there was some pretty hard wood to try and shift before I could get it down the the plank stage.  If I had an endless supply of logs I wouldn't have chosen this piece to work with because of the extra work required.  This is probably laughable to the more seasoned carvers as they can probably tell that the grain is all over the place too. 

The following image shows most of the harder wood removed.  Purely a case of chipping away at it with the axe, so time is the main expenditure, although I suppose it will increase the number of times you'd need to sharpen the axe.

Nasty lump has now been removed, and we're pretty much left with the spoon blank.

Some further work on the sides and it just about resembles the spoon that it's hopefully going to become.  The stop cuts are all made with the axe, which is pretty risky because it's so easy to go too hare and shear off the side of the bowl.  I've been lucky so far in the sense that whenever I've cocked up, I can find a way to recover the spoon either by changing the size or shape.

Further work with the axe (that could do with sharpening!).  The feathery bits are due partly because my axe isn't as sharp as I'd like, and partly because this is where the branch grew from and the grain appears pretty haphazard.

More refining with the axe.  My first spoon saw me being overly cautious with the axe, which meant I spent far too much time with the knife having to remove all of the excess material.  Lesson learned.

Starting to shape the bowl now, again, just with the axe.

Now the knife work begins.  This is a pretty large spoon as I still have plenty to learn about the way the tools react to the material and I'm guessing that a bigger spoon will give me more room to make mistakes (although it's gone pretty well so far).  The knife work is almost finished by this stage and I only need to neaten up the scruffier parts before starting on the inner surface of the bowl.

Below is my total number of spoons so far.  At the time of taking the picture I hadn't bought a crook knife, so they are all still some way from finished.  They appear in order of creation, with my first spoon on the left hand side and my most recent on the right.  

I've picked up some walnut oil as a treatment for the finished spoons and have tested it out on the smallest spoon.  It smells nice!  An unexpected, but welcome, side effect of the oil was that it highlighted the areas of the spoon where my technique needs to be improved.  My bowl carving skills need plenty of work, but this should improve massively when I sharpen my crook knife as at the moment it's far from the edge I'd like.  Still, it works well enough whilst I'm still learning.

I've no doubt there will be more updates relating to spoons in the near future, possibly punctuated with something to do with chickens, cameras or food.