Decorated Cherry eating spoons.

I made these two cherry eating spoons recently and I thought that I would decorate them with some chip carving. I love chip carving decorations into spoons and bowls it can really add to the design of the piece.

The one on the left I think is my favourite spoon to date.

Willow Ladle

Some pics of a smallish Willow ladle that I made recently.
Painted with oil paint and decorated with chip carving.

After some very important life decisions recently, I have decided to concentrate my time on my craft work and my tree surgery business and go self employed. From now on all my work is for sale and I am setting up a spoon carving course, details of which will be announced soon. This decision has not been an easy one to make but I know deep down in my heart it is the right one for me and my family.

A couple of sugar spoons

I made these sugar spoons recently.
The first one is made from a small Sycamore branch I had in the wood pile.

I left the bark on the handle as I liked the rustic just whittled look about it.

The second lives in my sugar pot, Its made from Sycamore also but all the bark removed.

This is a very useful spoon for me as it is holds two spoon fulls of sugar, perfect for my coffee :)

Cooking spoons.

I have been making alot of larger cooking spoons recently, I love doing these as they are nearly all done with the axe, only the bowls and final finishing are done with the knife. I have also done alot of chip carving decoration aswell on my spoons aswell as using paints.

These are all made from Willow, chip carved decoration and coloured with oil paint.
I have wanted to use more colour and after seeing the spoons by Jarrod M Stone Dahl and Jogge Sundqvist at spoonfest in the flesh, I thought that I would try and use oil and milk paints more on the lighter colour wood spoons I make.

Stoffer Westermann scorp

I have been using a few new tools recently, first of this is a post reviewing the scorp I got from a friend Lee Stoffer, this is an idea he and Chris Grant made together, Lee has been working with another talented smith Nic Westermann on producing a run of these for sale. I met up with Lee at Spoonfest and really got on with the scorp, I liked the idea of being able to use it both left and right handed.
I have been making alot of spoons of late and always find that I grab the scorp for tight bowls or if I need to use it left handed.

Lee handled it with a very nice piece of Yew, the handle shape is designed for pushing cuts, although I always use pulling but works very well with other grips.






























The one thing that I have found strange to get used to is the chips of wood can sometimes stay in the radius of the blade because it is a complete circle.
The one thing I love about the scorp is it can get through the wood fast!, it is a great tool for production work and is very sharp, as are all Nics tools.
All in all a great tool for my box and very handy indeed.