Spoons - Kolrosing

  Having recently acquired a second hooked knife and enough practice to get the best from those knives I've been carving wooden spoons.  The spoon on the right is poplar, a very straight grained wood that is soft for a 'hard' wood.   

  The spoon of the left is bass wood. Neither of these spoons are meant as cooking tools. I guess they could be used as 'spoon rests' on a kitchen counter or maybe as serving spoons for potato salad or the like.

  I carved these as idle time killers and to experiment with carving/adding design detail to the handles.   A while ago I watched a You Tube video on Kolrosing, and decided I would like to give it a try. 

  As you can see my initial efforts are crude when compared with the craftsman on the video, but Rome wasn't decorated in a day.

  It is always fun to try something new.  As is often the case, the internet has a host of useful information on this traditional wood craft.

cheers, ianw

Two Weeks away from the Shop

 So for two weeks I haven't posted anything.  That does not mean that I have been sitting in the shade drinking Mint Juleps. Well, in fact I had a Mint Julep last Thursday evening, oh my goodness it went down smoothly. It was an evening of decadence, I also ate four different kinds of home made ice cream/sherbet.  My host, the ice cream maker, recommended "The Perfect Scoop" as his ice recipe book. I have it on order from our local library.

  What else?  I spent a week riding my motorcycle around Muskoka and the Haliburtion HIghlands in fabulous weather. I can not recommend those regions of Ontario highly enough. My family is from Bracebridge, though I've never lived there and so can not claim to be perfectly objective.  As a foot note there is an excellent bakery in Dwight Ontario called Erika's, outstanding donuts. 

  Anyway, what else?  Gardening, it's a jungle out there, and we love it.  

  Wood working, well, whittling while enjoying quiet evenings on Lake of Bays.

  That is my Mora 511 carbon steel knife and the two projects that I whittled while sitting on the porch after my rides.  I found a piece of dry white cedar and went with the grain .  All I needed aside from the knife was a sheet of 80 grit and a sheet of 150 grit sand paper.  My grand daughters found the two ended spoon a bit odd but it was inspired by 'the daily spoon' My plan for the wooden knife is to make it into a letter opener knife by chemically hardening the blade with epoxy or something similar. I still get some snail mail. 

  Otherwise I have  just been puttering around and enjoying the summer weather,  that has finally arrived. 

   

How To Build A Wooden Boat. 

  One day I am going to have a reason to make a boat like this. One day.

  I hope you are enjoying your summer and are out in the fresh air and sunshine whenever possible.

cheers ianw

365 Wooden Spoons or One a Day for a Year

  Last week Eva and I were in Bergen Norway and we visited the four main art galleries, Kode 1 through 4. There were many interesting things to see and I recommend setting aside  four + hours to visit all the galleries when you go to Bergen. 

  In Kode 1 was a year in the life of Stian Korntved Ruud.  For one year Mr. Ruud carved a spoon a day, he explored design and wood and the exhibit is fantastic.  A person could easily spend hours just looking at all his spoons. Imagine looking at each spoon for just a minute or two, 365 x 2 = 730 minutes / 60 = 12.6.  To fully examine each spoon would take several visits.

 Thanks to the wonders of the internet you can admire each of the spoons here:

the Daily Spoon  



  This morning I was at work in the shop knocking together a small table to stand beside a friends laundry room sink. 

  David arrived with four 2x2 by 6,  a couple of pieces of particle  board and a plan. In short order we had made the piece of laundry room furniture.  As David said it is not a sophisticated project and could have been done by him in his basement with basic tools, but...it sure is quicker and easier with a table saw to make the two rip cuts that were needed accurately and the sliding mitre saw to make the various cross cuts.  We used a couple of clamps to hold things together when we worked. 

  Building for David is especially easy since he always comes with a clear and measured plan.

  Last week we had three window replaced and one of the shop related things I have been doing is painting the window frames. The windows arrived primed only. At this point all three have been given two coats of trim paint and the furniture is ready to be pushed back into place.  I find painting fiddly diddly and I am not good at it, but with careful taping I think the windows look pretty good.  

cheers ianw

  

A Spatula, A Sander and A Fish

  A while ago I collected three pieces of fire wood in the garage planning to make some more spoons.  Today I split the wood into eight pieces, a couple are destined to be big deep spoons and I plan to make a couple of long handed spreaders to reach to the bottom of deep jam jars. The rest of the pieces will get turned into something, sometime.

 You can see I have a spatula roughed out from that batch of fire wood.  Between the push knife and the small hatchet I was able to rough out the general shape quickly. 

  Once I got the shape established I turned to modern noisy tools this time. Hand work is nice, but mine is a hybrid shop.   My 36 inch belt sander really brings things into shape in a hurry.  This sander was very good value for the money, I've run it for hundreds of hours over its life time with me.  Several years ago I had to replace the drive belt but otherwise it has been a solid performer.

  After using the big belt sander with 60 grit paper I moved to my random orbital sanders. Those sanders will generally help in the final shaping of a spoon.  I have four sanders, with different grits mounted.  That way I am not tearing the sanding pads off all the time and the hook and loop system lasts longer.

  The finished spatula, is sanded to 320 grit and finished with hemp oil  .  I do my final sanded by hand using a contour sander or my own devising.

old fashioned black board eraser 

  The firm felt supports the sand paper without there being a hard edge that might scratch the work at the final sanding stages.

  I am also working on a colourful shop projects.

   We are going to see our Grand daughters next week and I am taking the four year old a board game. It is an easy counting game and the 'men' will be small wooden fish.  Games for kids are tricky. If they like the game they want to play it all the time, which drives you crazy.  If they don't like it, they never play it and you feel rejected. 

  cheers, ianw

Spoon

 We have been having some wonderful weather these last few days  so I have tried to take advantage.  I've been for a couple of long motorcycle rides and other things have taken me out of my shop too. There will be plenty of cold and rainy days in the months to come,  now carpe diem and carpe coffeum,  I recently found a place that sells ginger cookies at a very reasonable price to dunk in my coffee.

  The only project I've finished lately is another spoon.

I think it is a witch's spoon!
 but the wood grain is lovely.

  This spoon was chopped from a piece of firewood.  I think it was black locust  It is hard and stringy. I chopped it into basic shape with my hatchet but used a grinder and a dremel tool to complete the shaping. 

  My Dremel is old school with a cord attached, and I generally use it with a flex-shaft.  A traditional wood worker this sort of thing is competed with knives and scrappers.  I love to carve/whittle, but this wood was so darn tough it was only going to get done with electric help.  

   Carving a wooden spoon is a link to many, many videos about carving wooden spoons.  I don't think there is anything I can add to the vast knowledge out there about spoon carving.  What I can add is that I think every wood worker should have a spoon on the go in their shop. There is almost nothing as relaxing as fussing away on a spoon and ultimately sanding it with ever finer sand paper until it is baby's bottom smooth.  After I wax or oil my spoons they are  remind my just how wonderful wood can feel. 

  It is supposed to be lovely tomorrow.  I won't be in the basement shop tomorrow either. It is good to be the King.

T.K.o.T.P.

Shop Trays

   I saw an Instructables post on how to make a folding valet tray from leather and immediately thought about how to change the materials but keep the idea. 

  I liked the folding tray idea for keeping small items from rolling off my desk or bench and generally controlling small parts and tools.  When carving I usually use four or five knives and chisels repeatedly and when painting often have a couple of brushes on the go at once. Gluing small parts is another time that I need to protect my bench top and control the mess. If these things are in a small tray like this they could be kept close at hand.  And if the tray wasn't leather they can be used for paint and glue and all types of mess, then be laid flat and washed out. 

Two Trays, one with two inch sides,
one with one inch sides.

Folded flat for storage

  Making these trays was easy, all it took was a sharp knife,duct tape, a straight edge and a bone folder. ( at an art supply store)

First I cut the coffee bag square, it is more or less 12 inches each side.

I used a coffee bag because they are quite tough and we've got lots of them. Also using a coffee bag to back onto the duct tape means that cost is reduced by one layer of duct tape.

 Next I taped the bag down in the middle, taping it to my cutting mat.  This way the bag doesn't move around while I add the other strips of tape. It is easier to tear the duct tape than to cut it with scissors or a knife. I left extra on the edges and then cut the excess off with a knife and a straight edge at the end.

  

  A bone folding knife is what I used to put a deep crease along each side. A bone knife is nice since it scores deeply but won't cut into the material, book binders use them all the time. To use the tray it is folded along the crease and held up with paper clips. When not needed the tray folds flat and stores out of the way.

  Since these trays  are quick and easy to make when they get messed up with glue or paint they can easily discarded.

  Making this spoon is partly want drew my attention to the tray.  It was a lovely day yesterday and I took my wood carving out to the back deck. I had a couple of knives and an couple of small gouges and some sand paper.  If I had, had a tray the knives wouldn't have rolled off the table and onto the deck as often. Also it would not have been a juggling act to get the various tools upstairs and out the back door. 

  You don't notice how often you drop things until you develop back trouble and the floor gets to be miles away. Anyway to keep things on the bench is worth the effort.

  I think that most anyone making things could use trays like this.

cheers, ianw

The End of Radio Silence

  In the old days of cool movies the leader of the intrepid band of heroes would call for 'radio silence' as the closed in on their target.  My silence's reason  hasn't been as dramatic.  For the first time since I started this blog January 29-2011, 885 blogs ago I took a couple of weeks holiday. For the first time since this all began I didn't look for anything to post while away on holiday.

  Yesterday we got home from three weeks in Sweden visiting our kids and grand kids. If I had been looking for blog things I would have talked about the three wooden spatulas that I whittled from fire wood at the kids cottage. Don't let limited tools keep you from wood workings. I used a fixed blade Mora 511 sheath knife,

carbon steel, delivered razor sharp and currently
on a sales deal of 3 for $15.00 Cdn in Sweden. Yes, I bought a few.

 the small blade on my Swiss Army knife 

I have owned and lost more of these knives that I care to remember. But...always replace them.

and a bit of sand paper to make two small spatulas for the little girls play kitchen and a full sized one for their Mommy's kitchen.

  I also wandered through every tool and hardware store I could find. I really liked the Bauhaus in Uppsala, it has a large selection of wood working tools.

  For me the highlight of the trip, after my daughter-in-law defending her Phd thesis and being awarded her degree by the medical faculty at Uppsala University was a trip to Mora Sweden to see the Dala horse factory 

all made and painted by hand in the factory in Musnas, near Mora.

was the stop in Musnas to buy a horse and some knives from a Mora/Frost knife clearance store.

the yellow handles knives were destined for Iceland
fishermen but the deal fell through. I got the knives for 30 SEK ($4.55 Cdn)
each. The blades are stout and very sharp, the handles will be replaced. The red knife is a Mora 511 and the blade a single bevel chisel knife. 

These four kitchen knives cost 50 SEK each, ($7.59 Cdn).
 Also very stout and very sharp, used in Iceland to clean fish.

 Northern Sweden looks like a giant plantation forest and much of their world is wood. Houses have wooden siding instead of vinyl and most of them are painted red or yellow.

 

  Anyway, we are back home, unpacked and trying to catch up on things.  It is nice to travel, it is great to see the grand kids, but it is nice to come home too.

cheers, ianw