Aaand its gone...

Today someone on my study expressed interest in my kuksas, and asked if he could have one. I gave him the second one i made. Quite odd to see it go already, but nice to see others appreciating my craft. To celebrate and mourn the thing, two more pictures:

Another kuksa

To avoid the stressfull things associated with school at the moment i decided to just ignore more pressing matters and carve. I took the opposing side of beech i carved the previous kuksa from and started chopping again to make another one. I think it turned out quite a bit better than the last one. No cracks this time, and no band-aids needed. I haven't oiled this one yet. I will wait a bit untill it is dryer. I was not as patient with the last one. I gave it some coats of walnut oil to see what it would do with the colours. Quite a promising prospect for the unoiled kuksa, i think!

A small kuksa

Today I decided not to make a spoon, but try something more elaborate than that. I got my tools out, selected a bit of straight grained beech from my meager woodpile (I need to go find new...) and began to chop and chop and slice untill I had something kuksa-looking. It only lacked the hollow. I thought that this would be a tedious task with just my Mora 164 to go at it, but the old faithful piece of steel surprised me once again. Despite the bad reviews it gets I get along with it very well. It left very nice clean cuts and removed wood at a decent pace. Anyhow, here are some pictures:

Chopping out the rough shape.

Beginning to form the bowl-shape

I forgot to take more WIP-pictures, so here is it in its near-finished state. 

Once it was nearly done I noticed a beginning crack in the front of the bowl. I superglued it, and will dry it very slowly to stop it from developing further.

Each spoon teaches a new lesson

I am trying to fill this blog up a bit, so I am posting some old work. These spoons and a small bowl were carved over the ascension-weekend.

On the big spoon I had issues with the neck. I couldn`t achieve a clean cut, but would again and again make a scar. The folk over on bushcraftUK.com gave me good advice, as they always do to everyone. My mistake was to work on the area that contained the problem. The solution lay in approaching this area from further away, so that there is some time to rock the knife out of the cut before the cut starts going against the grain. 

In this WIP picture you can see how correction after correction took me away from the shape I wanted to achieve initially. This inital curve is still there on the left. I left the final product assymetrical, as a lesson for the future. Unfortunately the handle has a split in it, but I hope it will dry shut eventually.

Soup.

 This was a pan full of goulash-soup that we cooked over the fire today at a family event. More than 30 people ate from it, and then there was left. It was a really nice thing to do on such an occasion. As an added bonus I got to use my axes to feed the fire. I had a bit of a play with the new hatchet, to test its splitting-capabilities. It obviously isn`t designed for heavy splitting but a little bit of technique and a firm swing make smaller bits of wood from larger bits of wood. Now hair smells like woodsmoke, my axes got some use, and a whole bunch of nice people sat together eating soup. What more does one want on a sunday-afternoon?

The spoon for my sister

This is the spoon my sister chose as her daily eatingspoon. I am pleased with both the bowlshape and the sideprofile of this one. I should try to copy it a couple of times to get it in my fingers.

Hatchet!

Last week i received a wonderful little hatchet in the post. I had initially ordered the Gransfors Bruks carving axe, and was very happy when it arrived. Unfortunately it had a nasty split runnin up the handle. I neihter have the materials nor the skill to succesfully rehang one of those, and frankly didnt want a new axe with a broken handle. The webshop i got it from was very helpful. They contacted GB, and within a week i had sent it back and received a full refund. Unfortunately a new carving axe would not be available till the end of juli, and i wanted a carving axe for on my holiday. It is therefore that i ordered the hatchet and i am glad i did. It is a very nice tool. Chops like a beast, and carves very accurately. The carving-axe is still on the wishlist, however. One never has too many axes, right?

A selection of eatingspoons

These are several eatingspoons i different styles that i made recently. My sister picked the most right one and the fourth on the left as daily users. I am glad someone else but me eats with them, because i am starting to have a shelf full of unused spoons here.