Tagged: commissioned lovespoon

I've finished both horse heads. For now. I spent most of my carving time today practicing on the chip carving. On different piece of wood! I got the cat the way I wanted it (on the practice piece) and began practicing on the squares below it. (No, you don't get to see that!) Based on what I'm seeing, I MAY need to do a fresh layout on the squares. I'm also playing with the exact angles and order of cuts. More playing needs to be done. After messing with the practice squares for a while, I decided to do the cat head on the spoon. Before I got to the nose and mouth my hands were beginning to tremble enough that I thought I'd better quit and do that tomorrow. It was a struggle to stop, though. "It's only five more little lines. I can do that in my sleep. Just five lines. Come on, you can do it," I said to myself. Fortunately, I noticed that I couldn't even draw the guidelines properly, so, descretion being the better part of valor, I decided to wait until tomorrow.

Principal carving is done! I've still got some tweaking to do on the bowl, but I'm almost there. After the tweaking (NOT twerking!) I'll begin using the dreaded Devil's Paper. Then there will be the oiling . . . followed by the oiling . . . followed by the oiling . . . followed by the curing of the oil. All in all, probably another week before the spoon hits the mail!

Finished the chip carving and put a border around it. Turned out pretty well, I think.

And now: THE BOWL! Now comes the really fun part, finishing the bowl. We can start to see the figure in the bowl. We'll have a bull's eye with some nice color: lots of different shades of brown and even some greens, very subtle. I love this part!

I'm often asked about how I avoid going too deep in the bowl and breaking out the bottom. First, don't get carried away with all the scooping (it's easy to do). Pay attention. Go slowly and keep measuring the thickness of the bowl. Some people use calipers for this, but I've found that the "Pinch Test," pinch the bowl between your thumb on the inside and your forefinger on the outside, gives me a better feel (get that? Feel! Ha!) For the thickness and the uniformity. I'll often find myself paring paper thin shavings off the outside of the bowl to match the curvature of the inside and keep the wall thickness uniform. The knives pictured with the spoon are made by Del Stubbs of Pinewood Forge.

Today, as you might be able to tell from the photos , I began the chip carving. It's so nice finally having a knife that works! I'm generally pretty good about stropping my knives to keep them sharp as I carve, typically about every 15 to 30 minutes, but I've found that this chip carving knife performs noticibly better If I strop it after I finish a square, about 12 cuts. I mean it's NOTICABLY better. I suspect that it is more about the polish on the blade than the sharpness. Down here in Flor-I-da it's so humid that you can get microscopic beads of moisture on a metal surface after just a few minutes. Moisture on a blade means binding in the wood. At least that's my theory. When it's humid down here EVERYTHING is damp! The medallion is done and half of the squares. Tomorrow the rest, and then on to the bowl. BTW, that pile of chips is the result of about 1.5 hours of carving. Once you start on the finish work, the volume of the chip pile decreases as the carving time increases.

The last couple of days were spent in zen-like contemplation, practice and refinement. I finished the cat and began working on the chip carving for the stem. I discovered a couple of interesting things. I haven't done much chip carving in the past, because it seemed like such a struggle to get it to look right. I discovered that I just didn't have a knife properly tuned for the work. As I began working on the practice piece I got increasingly frustrated at the way my knife was behaving. I was either having to use much more force than I wanted to, or I was having to make multiple thin cuts to do what most people do in one cut. The sharpness wasn't an issue; the issue was the blade profile. Most chip carving cuts are done with the first 1/8" to 3/16" of the blade. This blade was simply too thick, so I spent about 3 to 4 hours regrinding, sharpening and polishing the blade. I changed the inluded angle of the edge to about 15 degrees or less. I also ground a small swedge on the back of the blade near the tip to decrease the friction of the blade against the wood. I also rounded the back of the blade to make it more comfortable to push against. What a difference! Chip carving changed from a chore to a pleasure in one fell swoop. I still need to make the swedge a little wider and do more polishing on the blade.

Now that things were working the way they should be, I did two styles of chip carving for the stem. The one on the right is an older, more primitive style. It looks rather like laces. The one on the left is what is more commonly seen today. The client chose the one on the left.

I've finished with the back of the bowl, pretty much. You probably can't tell the difference, but I can. I'm much happier now. As I work on the inside of the bowl I'll undoubtedly be making small adjustments to the outside, but that's normal. I started on the horse heads and got one almost done. Still have a few minor adjustments to make before I start the next one. I used the Flexcut Detail Knife to do a lot of the horse head. I like Flexcut knives. They have good steel, good heat treatment, hold a good edge a long time, but there is one thing I just can't abide: that slick, lacquer coating they use on the handles. My hands sweat when I carve, so that lacquer makes it seem like I'm holding a piece of ice. Fortunately there is a simple solution: 100-grit sandpaper. The bare wood sticks to my hand like glue. A major improvement.

Today I got the back of the spoon about 98% finished. I've marked one area where I need to take off just a little more wood to get the symmetry I'm looking for. I'm probably going a little OCD on this, but that's me and spoon bowls. Once I move that wood I'll start on the horses, move on to the chip carving and do the inside of the bowl last.

Today was a light carving day. That off-side thumb was demanding a day off, but what I did today didn't put much of a strain on it. It kept its complaints to a dull roar. The first photo shows the transition from the medallion to the ridged stem on the back. 

I did this a day or two ago, but never posted a photo of it. I spent today working on the back of the bowl. I'll often spend as much time working on the bowl as I spend carving the entire rest of the spoon. To me, the bowl is the most important part of the spoon. Without a bowl a spoon is just a stick. I've been smoothing and shaping the bowl with the knives shown. 

The two on the left were made by Ralph Long, and the one on the right was made by Allen Goodman. I normally rough out the outside of the bowl with my Regular Sloyd from Del Stubbs. I like the longer blades for bowl work because they allow longer slices and I can control the transition from one curve to another better. Shorter blades leave me with a choppy feel. Once the rough-out is done I change to a much thinner blade, though still long. 

I lay the blade almost flat on the wood and use it like a plane or spokeshave. Using this technique I can get a surface that on anything other than a lovespoon would be considered finished. 

It only requires a couple of minutes work with sandpaper to get it baby-butt smooth. Any technique that lets me minimize the use of The Devil's Paper is worth the time it takes. 

I use the short bladed knife to do the short-radius, scooping cuts at the transition from the stem to the bowl. Now that I've removed more wood and smoothed out the surface the figure of the wood is becoming more apparent even in my poor photographs. 

This variation in color is what I love about poplar. You can get all shades of brown, greens, yellows and even purple. It's a terriffic looking wood and easy to carve.

I do all my carving with hand tools, 99% of which are knives. I do it this way for two reasons: 1) I try to emulate the traditional way of working. The young men of rural Wales (or Scandanavia) who began this tradition didn't have elaborate shops with lots of tools. They worked from the heart with what they had. That's the feeling I want to put in my spoons. 2) I hate power tools! They are noisy, dirty and dangerous. The only concession I make to modern tools is the use of a battery-powered hand drill to start the piercings on my spoon, and the only reason I do that is that it allows me to hold the piece in my hand while I'm drilling. A hand drill requires the use of two hands, and since my wife and I live on a 28-foot sailboat we don't have the room for a bench I can clamp the piece to while I drill.

I'm still trying to figure out the stem-bowl transition. I cut a little and stare a little. Cut a little more and stare a little more. It's time to do a lot more staring and thinking.

Now I have a really sore left thumb. Well, you know what THEY say (you know who THEY are, don't you), one must suffer for one's art. I got the front of the stem relieved to about where I want it and flattened.

Again, nothing fancy, just cut, strop, cut, strop. The back of the stem I decided to carve into a ridge. I don't know what it is about ridged stems, but I can't seem to stay away from them.

In any case it allows me to play a little and still stay within the budget (about which, more later). I began shaping the outside of the bowl, and my feeling about the wood has been borne out. This is going to be a seriously good-looking piece.

Even though it is not yet apparent in the photos, there is a good, strong figure working through the bowl. I had to be careful to make sure I was smoothing out an actual facet instead of trying to erase a grain line.

Ah, to have more such problems!

A stray thought about commissions occurred to me today as I was working on the spoon. If you buy a lovespoon from a website or store, mine or anyone else's, you get a beautiful piece of art at a price that is what it is without room for negotiation. A lovespoon doesn't have to be fancy or intricate, especially if it holds meaning specifically for you. When you commission a lovespoon you are not locked into a high price. You can decide on a budget, and between you and the carver work out a design that meets that budget. Lovespoons aren't just for the well-heeled collector, everyone can have one. And what's better, everyone can have one that has a special meaning just for you.

Today was another day of donkey work -- removing wood. Nothing fancy, no special techniques needed. Just strop, knife, hog off wood, repeat. I now have a sore left thumb. Probably 98% of the cuts I made today were what I call lever cuts (some call it a scissors cut): put your left thumb (non-dominant hand) on the back of the blade just above the handle, then move your right hand using your left thumb as a fulcrum. That produces a very powerful, very controlable shearing cut. It also produces a sore left thumb. The more I cut on this piece of wood, the prettier I think it's going to be when it's oiled. The medallion at the top has a lot of good figure running through it, and the bowl, with that dark stripe running slant-wise through it, should be pretty spectacular. Tomorrow more wood removal as I relieve the surface of the spoon's stem. After that, the bowl. The major decision I have to make regards how the stem will blend into the back of the bowl. That's going to take some thought.