New spoons and natural pigments

i did a bit of spoon carving for the first time in a while the other day. i was given a sycamore log from my father in law, so i decided that I would carve four spoons, one from each quarter of the log. i decided to follow Robin wood's advice and try to copy a spoon that i like. I also listened to what Richard said to me about working from a card template.

i don't carve anywhere near as much as I would like to, so it was great to carve a spoon a day and each one being in the same style. I feel like I really learned a lot.

I used my Stefan Ronnqvist axe to rough them out. The wood was surprisingly hard and so I wanted to get as much done with the axe as possible. This is a fantastic axe, very versatile. I need to do a separate post dedicated to it soon, but I want to spend a bit more time with it first.

This is the four spoons finished and the Jarrod Stonedahl spoon on the left that I tried to copy. Mine are definitely not as slender as Jarrod's, I chickened out a bit and left the neck a bit thicker. Overall I'm quite pleased with them, as I said earlier, I learned a lot and I like the fact that they are a set all from the same log. My biggest problem is that sycamore is such a dull wood. As you can see in this next picture, they really are quite plain.

So I decided that I would have a go at painting them like the original I was copying from. I bought some earth pigments from a re-enactors market and mixed up some egg and linseed oil paint.

To be honest I wasn't very impressed. I don't know whether I need to grind them up some more, but they just didn't really work for me. I like the un-even finish you get with this type of paint, but with some of them it was really difficult to get some decent coverage. The colour didn't seem to fix as well either and was still rubbing off a couple of days later.

I think that I need to see this as an experiment and it may be that I'll end up painting over them again at some point. If you're having more success than me with painting your spoons then I would love to get some advice, especially on what types of pigment you use. Just leave a comment.