Carving with my brothers

Richard's lightning fast axe work

As Richard mentioned in an earlier post, last Monday He and I, along with our brother Eden, spent the day carving together and chatting. It was a bit cold and frosty outside, so we took over Richard's kitchen.

Eden taking things slowly

I can probably count on my fingers the times that we've got together to carve and this is something that I definitely want to do more of this year. Richard had the idea that we all carve the same type of spoon, so he gave us one of his cooking spoons to copy.

Our collection of spoons

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures until the end of the day. I was too busy enjoying myself.

Richard's customised Mora 106

A wooden case for Richard's Robin Wood spoon knife

Robin Wood Carving Axe

I've noticed a few people asking about this axe recently on the green woodworking forums, so I thought it was about time I wrote a little review. I should probably start with a bit of background on the axe. If you don't already know about Robin Wood, then you should. He is one of the leading figures in green woodworking and traditional crafts in the UK. Primarily he is a bowl turner, but he has also been influential in the popularisation of spoon carving. For three years he has been the co-organiser of Spoonfest. When running spoon carving courses he lamented the fact that he couldn't recommend a suitable axe to his students that was the right side of fifty pounds. Probably the cheapest option at the time that would be ready to use off the shelf was the Gransfors Bruks Wildlife hatchet, which currently retails at about £65, a big outlay for someone who is just beginning. This led to him designing and manufacturing his own carving axe.

The axe comes incredibly sharp, but unfortunately doesn't come with a mask

The axes are not made by Robin, the heads are drop forged in China and ground in Sheffield. The handles are made in the UK to Robin's design. As one of the goals was to produce an axe that would be affordable to the beginner, it would be impossible to have the heads hand forged and still keep the cost at an appropriate level. At £35 it is probably the cheapest axe on the market that comes ready to use for carving.

At 500g in weight it is perfect for spoon carving, especially for those who aren't used to wielding an axe or don't do it that often. The light weight also means that you can be very precise with it. When I first tested it out I started carving a spoon out of some relatively hard apple. I ended up carving the entire spoon (except the bowl) using just the axe. It's not the prettiest spoon I've ever made, but it does show what you can do with a well tuned axe.

A pretty ugly spoon, but all done with the axe

The edge comes very sharp with a flat bevel that is polished to a mirror finish. It bites really well and the head can be held in the hand to make planing or knife cuts.

The handle is made of Hickory and has a lovely textured finish, similar to that found on the tools made by Svante Djarv, the idea being that it provides extra grip. I've personally never had a problem with a non-textured handle being slippy, but it definitely looks cooler like this.

Textured handle

The Svante Djarv Little Viking  axe with similar textured handle

I would certainly recommend this axe to anyone that is beginning spoon carving, but also to anyone that wants a light weight axe. At £35 it is a cheap carving axe, but it doesn't scrimp on any of the features. It is sharp and well balanced. It has a long cutting edge for its size, which extends above the handle. This makes it perfect for slicing cuts. Generally I would always advise people that when buying tools you should get the best that you can afford, but I'm not sure that spending more money would get you anything more. I've never used a Gransfors wildlife hatchet, but I used to own a similar Wetterlings axe. It worked fine, but the edge needed to be completely reprofiled and even then I prefer the pattern of the Robin Wood axe. You can buy axes with similar pattern heads for a lot cheaper, like the Bahco axe, which you can pick up for about a tenner. I've even managed to get a couple from car boot sales, but in order to get a suitable edge on it, you're going to have to spend a fair bit of time reprofiling it. Not ideal if you're new to the hobby.

Similar shaped head from a Car boot sale

The one drawback to this axe is the fact that its light weight makes it unsuitable for removing a lot of wood. I picked it up last night to try it out on a bowl blank I was preparing. I put it down after half a dozen swings as I just didn't feel that it was up to the task, the bowl was about 9" in diameter.

You can buy the axe directly from Robin Wood or from Woodland Craft Supplies.

One that got away....

I'd meant to include this spoon in my last post but forgot.

It's nothing special - a birch serving spoon - but there is something about it I love.

As you can see, it's not carved from regular green birch, which is generally quite blonde wood, but from a piece of spalted birch. Spalting is an effect caused, usually in dead wood (though not always) by the colonization of fungi which causes irregular colour changes and patternation of the timber. It can cause weakness in the wood but, as you can see from the zoning lines and colours of the spoon, it's worth making the effort with in order to get something a little different.

This spoon was particularly hard to carve as in places it was a bit punky and brittle - the thing I can best compare it to are those white firelighter blocks that snap and crumble.

What I love most about the spoon is how parts of it - the bits that are a toffee kind of colour - go completely translucent when held up to light - it's as if the wood has begun to turn to amber.

You can see the translucence a little on the bowl and handle - you can get the same effect by carving the spoon thinly, but this is actually quite a chunky spoon, but still quite see-through.

Some Christmas carving...

It's been a really busy school term and I haven't really had too much time for carving, so I was glad when we broke up for Christmas and I was able to dabble a little. I have to admit, I'm a little bit rusty, so it was particularly good to remind myself just how much I enjoy carving.

I came home one day to discover a friend from my last school had dropped round a bag with some sections of yew in - not a wood I get much opportunity to carve. There was one piece that was a natural spoon crook and so I thought it might make a nice gift to say thanks for the wood.

It was enjoyable to carve, not too hard or fibrous, and I just love the stark contrast between the dark heartwood and the light sap wood. I don't generally sand my spoons but I couldn't resist with this one and the dark grain came up like a horse chestnut.

The pattern on the handle is in two parts - the darker lines are carved (a thin sliver of wood removed) whilst the lighter lines are kolrossed or scored.

I just love that rich grain pattern.

I also had a nice natural crook in young ash so thought I'd make a cooking spoon that followed the grain of the wood. From the front it looks like a fairly regular spoon.

I've mentioned many times before how I prefer the aesthetics of a cranked, or curved, spoon.....

 ....but this one went a little too far, I think. It works a bit more like a shovel than a spoon - good for a croupier maybe?

On Monday two of my brothers, Ju and Eden, came over and we did some carving together. It was frosty outside, the wood pile was crusted with ice....

...and I had to defrost my chopping block with a kettle of boiling water as I was afraid the ice would chip the edge of my axe.

I'm not going to say too much about our day as Ju took photos so I'm expecting he will post. Ju brought a huge block of willow with him - He'd intended to turn a bowl from it but noticed a knot so thought it would be better billeted for spoons. We split it and there were knots and swirls all through the grain, so not really ideal at all. One piece, however, seemed to lend itself to carving into a spoon, so I thought i'd give it a go.

I probably shouldn't have risked it, with all the knots and crazy grain.

The crank of the bowl follows the grain of the wood.

A crazy knot in the middle of the bowl, but with a razor sharp knife and some very careful carving and it all turned out ok.

Spooncarving Course

It's been a while since I posted on here, so I thought I'd put some pics up of a spoon carving course we did recently. I'm not sure who the first person to say this was (I think it might have been Barn Carder), but I've heard someone refer to spoon carving  as the gateway drug of greenwood working. That's certainly how it was for me and it's exciting to think that we're introducing people to this kind of  thing.

Dave getting used to the axe

Our students for the day were David and Jane, a great couple that picked things up very quickly. It was particularly satisfying watching them gain confidence with the axe as they were both a little bit cautious at first (understandably).

Richard helping Jane with some of the knife grasps

The weather was terrible so we took over Richard's kitchen for the day. This meant that we could smell the lovely sausage and lentil lunch that Richard had made for us mixed in with the smell of the green wood.

Pointing out some of the elements of spoon design

Jane is an illustrator and has recently been working on a couple of books by Ben Law. I loved the drawings that she made to accompany her notes.

Time flew by and it was a bit of a rush towards the end, but they both managed to finish their spoons and also took some wood with them to complete the set.

A day of carving contrasts.....

I haven't really done much carving over the past few months - any of you who work in schools will understand, that first half-term back is pretty hectic and so when I've had the time, I haven't really had the energy.

During the half term holidays I went with my wife and two youngest to Prestatyn, North Wales for 5 days in a caravan at a Haven Holidays camp site. It's not something we've ever done before, but it was one of those holidays vouchers-in-The Sun-for-£9-which-once-you've-added-all-the-non optional-extras-actually-costs-you-considerably-more type holidays so we thought we'd give it a try as we had very little to loose. To cut a long story short, whilst I had a blast being with my family, playing Boggle, learning to play Backgammon and eating Reeses Pieces which were only a pound a packet at the Poundshop, it wasn't really our cup of tea and I can't see us doing a holiday camp type holiday again.....but.....

Whilst I am not a fan of storms so powerful they do damage and endanger lives, the silver lining to such events for the greenwood carver is the bounty of wood we can sometimes pick up as a by-product. When hurricane Gonzalo came a-calling on the Monday night of our stay in Prestatyn, I awoke to the sound, irresistible to all carvers, of a chainsaw working near by.

I jumped up, dressed and went out to find that a willow tree, one of the many scattered around the site, had been dislodged, its roots cracking a water main in the process, and the guys responsible for maintenance around the place were taking it down in order to stop the gushing.

When I asked if there was any chance of snagging a few pieces of wood (I couldn't take too much as my wife was insisting we take the children back home with us again) a very pleasant man named Josh (he of the chainsaw in the picture) said he would be happy to give me some wood and to come back in the morning when they had had time to mend the water issue and he would be cutting up the tree.

We chatted for a while and it turned out that Josh was himself a greenwood worker, making adzed bowls and some spoons and that he was a friend of Nic Westermann's and often struck for him when he was demonstrating. What a small world! We talked tools and wood for a while, before he needed to get back to work, but when I came back in the morning, not only had he set me aside some good sections of straight-grained wood, but had brought with him from home a green Hornbeam crook to have a go at carving. What a nice man!

So I came home with good memories and some wood - what could be better?

So, last weekend I sat down to rough out a few spoons and what a day of contrasts it turned out to be: on the one hand I had the Hornbeam - hard, close-grained, smooth as alabaster when you carve it but liberal with the blisters and leaving your knife in need of regular stropping; and on the other I had some spalted birch, almost on the turn and definitely past its best, fairly punky, soft as butter though more likely to 'snap-out' than shave but with a beautiful stripy patternation. And so I made myself a couple of spoons.

I'm looking forward to putting decoration of some sort on the Hornbeam as it should carve very crisply - perhaps some lettering.

spoons in various stage of incompletion - work for another day

Birch Bark Boxes

I'm a big fan of Birch bark boxes. I've made a few of them, but it's not always easy to get decent bark here in the UK. I probably need to try a bit harder. I bought the marvellous book by Vladimir Yarish, which is inspirational, with fantastic colour photographs throughout. It's worth buying just for that, but it also contains step by step instructions on how to make a variety of containers and other objects (including shoes) from birch bark. Jarrod Stonedahl put a picture of a lovely antique tobacco box on his blog a while back.

One of the great things about this object is that it's quite small and therefore doesn't require a lot of bark. So I decided to have a go at making one. If you click on the picture, you can just about make out the stamped decoration.

It turns out that I had enough bark for two so I made another, this time with a bit of extra decoration inspired by Vladimir's book.

Today I visited the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and saw a fantastic example of a similar style. It's pretty dark and I only had my phone for pictures, so apologies for the poor quality.

More about the Pitt Rivers Museum later.