wooden spoon

Maple spoon; an unexpected experiment

/ Re-Farmer / 15 Comments

Today was another hot one, which made it a good day to finally go into the basement and see what I could do with the various pieces of wood I’ve brought down there.

Since getting my wood carving kit, I haven’t had much chance to make things with it. I used the spoon blank it came with for my first attempt. Then I used some of the lilac wood pieces to make a hair pin for my daughter. I have since made a longer, plainer lilac hair stick for my daughter, and tried to make one out of cherry for myself.

I say “tried” because when I got a bit decorative at the thick end, it ended up breaking, twice. The inner core of the piece of cherry I was using was rotted just enough that when I tried shaping the wood, it was just too weak. This was true of the lilac wood, too, but I hadn’t tried to carve anything that would affect the integrity as much, so they were fine.

Today, I wanted to make something with some of the maple pieces from the tree I had to cut part off, earlier this year, so it would be safer for my brother to move around on the shed roof he was patching.

I had a branch of it set aside, waiting for a day like today, and I cut a short piece to work on.

I was thinking of going very simple, and making a spreader or something like that.

Thinking of the lilac and cherry wood, though, I decided to split the piece and see what it was like on the inside.

Well, crud.

I’m not going to be able to make a spreader out of that.

So I cut a piece from a larger branch I had set aside.

Dangit!

I really hope it isn’t all like this. The stuff I want to make uses the heartwood. For the larger pieces, I’m thinking of cups or bowls. Stuff I plan to actually use.

In fact, there was a particular piece of dead maple I’d found while cleaning up the maple grove, I think in our first summer here, that I was looking forward to using.

It doesn’t look like much on the outside, but when I cut it, this particular maple had red rings inside it.

I cut a piece off the end and took a look.

That does not bode well.

So I split it.

*sigh*

Yup. The middle is rotted.

However…

What about the edges? The parts with the red it in still looked solid.

So I split it again.

It did not split well, but the wood did seem pretty solid. Could I do something with this?

I wasn’t sure.

Over the next hour and a half or so, I hacked at it with a giant knife (which I’ve been using in lieu of a hatchet), decided to try the sloyd knife to carve out a spoon bowl, gave up on that and tried the Dremel (the two different tips I tried did the job, but the friction actually charred the wood!), finally broke open my new set of rasps and used a bar rasp with 4 different surfaces, and yes, even the carving knives.

Part way through, I dragged one of the chimney blocks from the old basement to use as a lower, solid surface. Especially for when I was hacking away with the big K-bar.

So that hunk of wood up there?

This is what I got out of it.

I didn’t stop to take any photos while I was working on it because, to be honest, I didn’t think it would work!

So here, I am at the stage of using my coarsest grit sand paper.

As I moved up to finer sandpaper, I would sometimes use my little vice.

You can really see the gouges left by the rasp. The vice made it much easier to just use a narrow strip of sandpaper around the handle and pulling back and forth.

Working my way through ever finer grits of sandpaper took probably another hour and a half.

Sanding the inside of the bowl was the most difficult. While I could use the curved sloyd knife a bit, the wood was really too small for the blade. What I really needed was a wood gouge, but I don’t have one. So that’s where the Dremel came in handy, to get the bulk of the wood out of the bowl, but I still had to cut out the bits that charred from the friction and shape it. I ended up using the other carving knives more than the sloyd knife, because of that.

Here it is, after final sanding.

You can see on the scrap wood, where the knife was hitting while I was chopping away the excess wood on the spoon. :-D

I also included the bar rasp, to show the different surfaces.

Of course, I just had to get a picture of it next to a piece of the wood it came from.

I still can’t believe I was able to get this out of that chunk of wood!

As I was sanding it, I noticed black showing up in the non-red parts of the wood.

Having done my research before I started with my first attempt at carving, I recognized it as spalting. There are people who go out of their way to use spalted wood. It’s basically a sign of the wood’s decomposition.

It was very faint as I sanded, but how would it look after being oiled?

And how would that red show up after being oiled?

Let’s find out!

Wow!! What a difference!

I could have cut this part out, but I kind of like it.

Unfortunately, I find the spalting makes it look like it’s dirty. :-(

On the back, you can still see some of the roughness of the would that I didn’t quite get rid of completely. They look a bit like scratches on the lower part of the spoon. The part that became the outside of the spoon bowl had some chunks missing from how the wood split. It meant less excess wood to remove in that area, at least.

So this experiment was a lot more successful than I had dared hope! Not only was I able to get something out of a partially rotted piece of wood, but I was able to start and finish a spoon in one sitting!

One of these days, I want to try making a fork. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Better than I expected

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

Today, I finally got the riding mower in to the shop for some TLC. We finally got to use the new ramps my brother bought me. <3 The girls and I had to take the middle seats out of the van (one of the first things we did after buying the van was take out the bench seat in the back; we never put it back and left it behind when we moved) to fit it, but we got it in, with room to spare.

It was rather funny when I got to the shop. After talking to the lady at the counter and getting the work order form filled in, I asked about getting it unloaded out of my van.

She did a double take and looked at me. “It’s in your van?” Yes. I can fit a lot in that thing!

She got someone to come out to unload it with me. As we were walking out, he asked me where it was, and I told him it was in the van. My van was the only one in the parking lot at the time.

He did a double take.

“You got it in a van??”

:-D

Yes. Yes, we did!

So that is now delivered, and I will get a call with an estimate before they work on it. I made sure to mention the drive chain had come off, and that I didn’t bother putting it back on, since I can’t reach under to tighten what needs tightening. I also mentioned the tire I think may need replacing, as well as mentioning that it’s had a hard two years, so if they see anything else, let me know!

Thankfully, we have the new push mower, so there is no rush to get it done.

Once that was done, I called up my mother to see if she was home for the next while. My timing was perfect, as she did have something booked later. The building she lives is has started to hold social events again, organized by a social worker. I had just enough time to pop over. I told her I had something for her; a mushroom!

“Oh! I hope it’s okay,” she says.

It took me a moment to realize she thought I meant mushrooms I’d picked at the farm. :-D I cleared that up with her!

Now, I wasn’t sure how she would respond to the spoon. My mother is not exactly gracious with gifts. In fact, she is often very cruel, and I would not have been surprised if she refused it. As it was, when she finally saw it, she immediately started talking about what kind of mushroom it was that she wanted me to carve for her, and doodled it on the back of an envelope. I explained to her (again) that I got a spoon blank in my carving kit, and when she asked for a mushroom, I decided to include on in the spoon, and a morel was basically what fit. I would need wood in a different size and shape to carve what she wanted – and now I have her sketch to go by. She just laughed and said there was no hurry.

I had to ask specifically if she wanted to keep the spoon or not, since she had dismissed it immediately to do the sketch. I told her it was my first carving, and that I was offering it to her, if she wanted it. She said she would keep it.

Getting that straight was a bit like pulling teeth! I think she might actually like it, but I’m not sure.

Then she asked me if she’d ever shown me her Russian spoon. No, she hadn’t! So she brought it out for me to see.

While the spoon is from Russia, she got it from her late aunt, who was born in Canada. My mother said that it was spoons like this that they used for eating, when she grew up in Poland. (What a large size for an eating spoon!) She mentioned that the spoons they used were painted, too, and commented on how they must have been eating the paint, as it came off over time. Who knows what was used to make the paint; it’s unlikely to have been something commercially prepared, in that region and time period. Home made or purchased, any paint still could have been potentially toxic!

I’m really glad she showed it to me.

Once at home, I decided to spend some time in the basement to work on a hair pin my daughter requested. I’ll post about that separately. Before I do, though, I just had to share my company!

Of course, as soon as I sat down at the work table, I had kittens all over me. They did eventually move on, except Big Rig.

Who decided to give my arm kisses.

My goodness, she looks like Susan (who would be her big sister!).

Then she heard a kerfuffle and ran off to join her siblings.

Beep Beep is so patient! :-D

Later, I looked up from my work and found this face, staring at me.

Nicco looks ready for a nap! :-D

The lilac wood she has a paw on is the branch from which I’d cut off a piece for the hair pin.

Unfortunately, at the point I was at when I took that picture, I was needing to use the Dremel, and the noise chased her away.

I was actually able to start and finish the project, even with the kittens crawling all over me, so that worked out much better than expected!

I’ll have photos of the finished hair pin in my next post.

The Re-Farmer

Carving progress: it’s finished!

/ Re-Farmer / 12 Comments

I am happy to say that I have finally finished my first attempt at carving!

Yay!

My trip into town was successful, in that I found a teeny tiny tip for my Dremel.

Saffron made sure to check it out, too!

I discovered something when I went to put it on my Dremel, though.

It didn’t fit.

The shaft is too small. By maybe a millimeter!

Well, it’s an engraving tip, and I have an engraving tool, so I got that out.

That one was even worse!

What to do? I wasn’t going to take it back. Not only did I have to destroy the packaging just to open it, it was the ONLY tip they had that was small enough for what I needed.

Painters tape to the rescue!

I got it on, and it was secure. Perfect!

After making a few practice passes on the piece of lilac I’d practiced the carving knives on, I started using it on the morel.

This is how it looked, immediately after I finished (and you can see the tape that allowed the tip to fit). I was really happy with this tip. It was exactly what I needed for the job. If anything, I would have gone even smaller, if I could!

While certainly better than the carving knives, it was still rather messy. Sanding it did take care of some of that.

I have sandpaper only up to 220 grit, which is adequate for the job. No way to get into the holes, though, which is okay. I wasn’t done with it.

The next step was to break out the wood burning kit. The kit has a very fine pointed tip that I used to burn inside each hole in the morel. This allowed me to also burn away any ragged bits.

Once the insides of the holes were done, I could use the side of the tool to burn the flat surfaces.

Here is how it looked, once done.

The only thing to do after this is to oil it!

Two Face decided to “help”. :-D

Here is the completed spoon.

For the mushroom, I basically poured the mineral oil over it, to get into all the crevices, then used a paper towel to apply oil to the rest. At this point, I will let it sit for a day or two, then see if it needs more oil. I’ve seen sites that recommend putting small things like spoons into a slide-lock bag with oil, making sure the air is all squeezed out, and the item is in contact with oil all over, then leaving it for several days. I might try that with future projects, but I think just a light coating of oil is adequate for this one.

I am really happy with how this turned out!

I feel much more encouraged about tackling some of the wood I’ve salvaged lately. :-) I think my next projects, though, will be spreaders.

No bowls to hollow out! :-D

The Re-Farmer