Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.

   

  The spoon from the previous blog is sanded and finished with hemp oil.  I finished another spoon, yesterday but it has already gone out the the door.  These make great gifts, everyone needs a spoon.

  Over the Christmas holiday two of our grand children were here and I cut the shapes out of the wood rounds and my grand daughter and I decorated them.  It was interesting, we used acrylic paint and bamboo skewers for painting.  The skewers make is very easy to make and control the dots.

   

We also made a house for small stuffed animals to live. Also it got taken away before it was photographed.  That was a shame, this was the first time the coping saw was used by a kid. She designed and built a nice little bungalow with very little intervention from Opa.

  This was a better Christmas than last year, we got to see family and have people visit and with luck we will pull through this latest health issue with as little suffering as possible.

  I hope the same for all of you.

cheers ianw

Deer

 

  Yesterday, I made a deer for our yard.  Eva had talked about wanting something to add character to the otherwise dead winter yard.  We looked a a variety of things on the Net and as always I went my own way anyway.  I did closely examine several of the internet examples to get an idea of what sort of proportions  worked best.  The trick is to get the general size, shape and proportion so even something this rustic and non-representational  will be perceived as a deer.  It is also important to remember that your "art" may be better if it doesn't try to copy real life too closely.

  

  I had the good luck to pick up the cedar body on the side of the road a while ago and then get the head just the other day.  Dried cedar is very light and so spindly legs are plenty strong enough.  The neck needed to be thicker than the legs but I didn't have a natural branch available so I roughed up an aged 2 x 2.  The building process was not complicated, creating the design and gathering the materials together took the majority of my time.  I even made several sketches first.  All the angles are drilled free hand and set by eye, once the general plan was formed it was easy.  Making up my mind took the most time. 

   

  Rustic wood working might be a good place to start your wood working career since it doesn't really require any special or expensive tools.  I have the good fortune to have inherited two excellent draw knives but lower cost alternatives are out there if you look and can sharpen your tools properly. Any drill that will turn a large spade bit is adequate.  The saw I use for tough lumber is a cheap pull saw from the local hardware store.  I have two very good edge tools in the hatchet and bench knife, but again decent quality tools are readily available for a decent price. 

  I will keep my eye out for materials to make a fawn for the spring time.

 cheers ianw 

Spoons, it is the season.....

 

  Step one in carving a spoon is wood selection.  Sometimes I begin with a sawn board about one inch thick, usually I also mark the spoon out and cut the outline shape on the band saw. 

  Fast and effective, but lately I have been using Japanese Ornamental Cherry, last spring I cut a fairly large branch off the tree in front of our house. Using wood like this  results is more individual and attractive spoons.

  This week as I split the branch I discovered the wood is still a bit damp inside. Slightly damp wood is easier to carve. I split the branch with a hatchet and large wooden maul. 

  I mark the basic outline on the wood and then use my hatchet, draw knife and heavy carving knife to rough out the basic shape.  The handle's ultimate shape is decided by the wood grain and so often not perfectly straight. Shaping the handle to be comfortable and useful even though slightly bent is part of the carver's art. A spoon with a bent handle is definitely a right or left handed tool, but that is part of what makes each spoon individual.

 This spoon is awaiting final sanding.  In my experience it takes longer for the final sanding then to get the spoon to this stage. I usually carve a couple of spoons, clean up the work space and then sand them. Sanding is noisier and not as much fun as I often opt to use power sanders for the final shaping, it is just faster.

  If there is any doubt about this being hand hewed,

the shop needs to be cleaned with a shovel after making a couple of spoons.

 I have a few spreaders and a couple of cutting boards to finish before Christmas so I best carry on.

cheers ianw

 

 

Quiet Projects - a solution to a problem.

  Elm is an interesting wood with nice colour and grain. I was listening to an audio book and played around in the shop.  I decided to make my wife a pendant. I had cleaning to do and a bunch of little bits of nice wood accumulated, so I carved out a pendant ( 1 1/2 inch across).  It was a pleasant diversion, with knives, rasps and sand paper.  

  I think I will make some more to attach to Christmas gifts. I will have to write on the To:, the From will be obvious.

 

NEXT

  A silly project:

   My soap kept falling off this shower rack and finally I got around to fixing the problem.  I actually had to wait until I bought copper wire before I could  make this.

  The top shelf needed something to keep the bars of soap and little things from falling off. A world famous blogger would not post this, their projects are so much more epic.  Probably.         I am retired; at this point I avoid epic, but also.....most of life is not epic.

  I ripped the wood on the band saw, drilled, sanded and assembled with copper wire a solution to a problem.  To me, that is one  reason for having tools and a shop. It is nice to solve a problem in house. The typical solution is to go to a store and buy something made and shipped from the other side of the world.  I only call on international industrial might when I have to.  Maybe that is an attitude to cultivate?

cheers,ianw   

just an idea, 

if you've got the materials at hand.