More large cooking spoons.

Had some fun tonight, and made 4 cookingspoons. I hope to make two more tomorrow morning. After that I`ll have to take a look at the wine-project again. Botteling of the port and racking of the plum wine is scheduled for saturday night or sunday somewhere.

These spoons are all sycamore and all between 35 and 40 cm long.

I am experimenting with normal round bowl shapes and assymetrical bowlshapes that are supposed to help scrape tight corners in pots and pans.

Cooking spoons

A short and quick post to show some of the cooking spoons I made over the last week. The small two are from two halves of one apple branch and are about 26 cm long. The large one (sycamore) is quite a beast at 40 cm. I am investigating what a good standard size do-it-all spoon is, since the last few weeks several people have approached me wanting to purchase cooking spoons. (I know, I was surprised too.) I do enjoy these large spoons so I`ll be making a few more of that calibre.

For the rest I`d like to mention that I`ll recieve a pretty cool book at some point in the next few weeks. 'Swedish Carving Techniques', by Wille Sundquist, is apparently the green wood carving bible. It went out of print a long time ago and in the second-hand circuit it popped up every now and then for several hundred dollars. Now Taunton Press in the USA has reprinted it, and for 25 dollars you can call yourself de owner of this book. At first I was bummed out, because after a phonecall to the press it seemed like I couldn`t order the book since they didn`t take my dutch debet card or paypal. Then my faith in humanity got a huge boost when someone in a spoon-carving facebook group I`m a member of offered to order one for me. I very gladly took that offer, paypalled him the money, and now anxiously await the mailman to see why this book is such a big deal in the carving world.

Shrink pot. A picture tutorial.

While roaming the internet I found that there seems to be more information out there on how to make shrink rays than there is on shrink pots. There are some write ups done about them by people that are far more knowledgeable than me. Examples: Here is a blog post by Mark Emery, here is one by Robin Wood, and of course Sean Hellman makes fanstastic shrink pots as can be seen here. What I found lacking on the net, however, was a clear tutorial for novices such as myself. People nearly as green as the wood they work. And therefore I decided to produce such a tutorial in the hope that other green woodworkers have a place to start from. 

A shrink pot is a container that is made from a hollowed log of green wood. The bottom is made to fit the inside of the hollowed log and inserted into a groove that is cut near the bottom end. The green wood will shrink and lock around the bottom, resulting in a nice watertight container. They are fun to make and do not require much tools. I use a drill, a spoon knife and a knife for them. For materials you`ll need a bit of green round wood to make the actual pot, and another bit to make a board with for the bottom. This board is ideally made out of dried wood, but using green wood can also be done. Wood shrinks a lot more radially than length- or widthwise, and therefore the pot will lock the bottom in place fine. For the pot in this tutorial I used an apple branch for the pot itself and a some dry oak for the bottom.

First cut the wood to length and drill a hole through the middle. I use a powerdrill and a 25mm flatbit, but it could of course also be done with an auger or handpowered drill. When you use an auger it might be easier to drill the hole first and then cut the wood to length afterwards. The hole will give the spoonknife an edge to bite on and will speed the whole thing up a lot. 

 Here are the tools I used. A mora 164 and my carving knife (a rehandled mora 511). I am quite certain that the spoon knife is just a luxury to have here and that the whole pot can be made with the straight knife. The spoon knife is just more convenient and a bit quicker when it comes to hollowing out the pot.

 

Work the pot from both ends taking care to achieve an even wall thickness. I do not think there is a rule for wall thickness. Thicker walls will press on the bottom plate tighter when they shrink, but that also brings the risk of the bottom shifting or cracking in the drying process higher. This can again be alleviated by cutting a deeper groove and using a thicker bottom plate. You can play around with it a lot. I haven`t made enough of these to give sound advice from experience yet. I have, however, seen a lot of these on the net, and for this size (10 cm high, 7cm wide, bark not counted) a 1cm wall seems fair. I did not count the bark with the wall thickness or diameter. The bark does not add to the structure of the pot and is only there to look rustic. 

When the walls are thin enough for your liking, it is time to cut the groove. Determine what side of the pot will be the bottom, and draw a line spaced about 1 cm up from the bottom on the inner wall. 

 Then, using your straight knife, make a cut about 1.5mm to 2mm deep over the line. It is important to make this cut in a 90 degree angle relative to the longitudinal axis of the pot. That is because this cut will form the ridge against which the bottom plate will later rest.

 Then follows a part that I could not photograph on my own while making the cut, so I`ll describe it as well as I can. Coming in from the bottom side, make a cut that is similar to the previous one, but angled 45 degrees downward. This will remove a bit of wood resulting in a groove that has a sharp edge at the top and a more tapered edge towards the bottom. This will help the bottom plate slide in and lock on place. Here is a bad picture of the groove.

It is then time to carve the bottom plate. Begin with flattening the material you want to make the bottom from, and get it near to the appropriate thickness. In this case that is a few mm. Place the pot on the material and trace the inner diameter onto the wood with a pencil. I also like to mark the orientation of the bottom plate with a line on both the pot and the plate. I noticed it is not always obvious how the orientation of the plate was after you spent some time whittling it down, and such a mark that tells you exactly how you planned to put it in really helps. From here on it is just a game of trimming the plate down untill it just fits into the tube of wood. I find that tapering the edges of the bottom plate helps to achieve a good fit.

 When you can just about push the plate into the tube, tap it in further with your knife handle. If all is well it will click into the groove.

That is essentially it. You have now succesfully made a shrink pot. All that rests is waiting for it to actually shrink and gain a tight fit on the bottom. I trimmed the top edges of the pot a bit, and called it done. Here it is in a picture with my Opinel #8 for scale.

And a picture of what the bottom ended up looking like in better light. 

The pot can now be used. What for? Well, typically they are equipped with a fitting lid and used as containers for dry goods like spices etc. I like the idea of using one to grow herbs in in the kitchen. Momentarily it stands on a shelf holding some wooden spoons. Once dried it will get promoted to function as a cinnamon-container, I think.

I hope this tutorial is clear and inspires some people to have a go. Making a  shrink pot is very achievable, and doesn`t take so long. In fact, it took me longer to complete this blog post than it did to make the pot.

Shrink Pots

Recently I have become inspired by shrink pots. A shrink pot is a container that is made from a hollowed log of green wood. The bottom is made to fit the inside of the hollowed log and inserted into a groove that is cut near the bottom end. The green wood will shrink and lock around the bottom, resulting in a nice watertight container. There are wonderful examples of these pots online, and I wanted to have a go at one as well. I made one from apple, with an oaken bottom. Unfortunately I split the thing while hollowing it out, and could only rescue it by sawing it in half. It has lost a lot of height because of that. But I am still happy with it. It was a nice exercise and now I know I can make a shrink pot with the tools I have, and do not need fancy implements as groove-cutters or gouges. I drilled a hole through the log first with a 25mm  flat bit, and hollowed it with my spoon knife from there. Then I cut the groove with the tip of my carving knife, whittled the base to fit and tapped it into the groove. Now the drying process will finish it. It isn`t all that large, but I am happy I made it. I`m quite sure I`ll make more of them.

Yesterday I also had another small project. I made a not-from-birchbark sheath for a carving knife. I needed a blade-cover, and lacking nicer materials I decided to apply the technique used to make a birch-bark sheath but use cardboard and parachord instead. It is not pretty, but it works quite well and I had some practice for when I come across suitable birch bark.

I like storm.

I really like storm. I like being outside in the rough weather and enjoy being blown around by the elements. It is a wild feeling. Coming inside to tea afterwards is hard to beat too. Another great thing about storms is that afterwards I can stock up on carving wood. I have collected quite a bit of sycamore after the last big storm we had here, and I have been playing around with it. I have been making a bunch of teaspoons to function as a set. All are roughly done, but a few need to be sanded through the highest grits. I dislike sanding, so this might take a while for me to begin with.

This picture is taken by my brother. I`ll mention which images aren`t mine, but I do not think it is necessary: It shows immediatly...

Here are a couple more, in various stages of sanding. Eventually they`ll all be sanded up to 600 or 800 grit, and soaked in rapeseed oil for a bit.

See? This picture is mine.

Further I have carved some eating spoons from the sycamore. I really like the wood. It carves cleanly and easily. It splits easily too. A very pleasant wood to work with. The only complaint is that it is a bit blonde for my liking. Well. I can`t have everything. It might be just the motivation I need to practice kolrosing patterns to spice them up a bit. Here is a small eating spoon that is perfectly sized for deserts. I am pleased with the curve and the bowl-to-handle transition, but I might have focussed on that too much. The bowl-symmetry got a little lost in this one.

Another spoon I want to post has a larger bowl. I am pleased with the handle on that one, and also on the handle-to-bowl transition. The long cuts work quite well on the handle. I now need to practice making them smooth enough to create a straight line between facets.

The red candle that appears as a badly imaged prop is one of the candles I made from old candlewax. We save the stumps from burnt out candles and I like to melt the wax and reuse it. I have a whole load of these little glass jars and quite a bit of wax so I`ll be making a few of these in the days to come.

For the rest I`d like to mention that I am quite excited to be a part of the second international secret spoon-swap that is organized by people in a fantastic facebook group. Over a hundred carvers from over the world make a spoon to send forward to someone else, and in this way every one that sends a spoon will recieve one from another carver. I feel a bit bad for the person that`ll receive my spoon, because there are so much brilliant carvers involved and my work is definitely not up to their standards. I`ll try my very best though, and I think the concept of this event is great.