'Cariad' Welsh Lovespoon

The intention had been to commence fretting out the pierced areas as the next stage but I was a bit worried about the small amount of room I'd left for separating the chain links at the top of the spoon, So I tackled Carving the chain first. After carving the chain links I began establishing some of the levels to which various elements would be carved. Doing this helps me to visualise those parts of the design that couldn't be be fully planned in the two dimensional drawing.

I also did a bit of roughing out inside the spoon bowl and will get back to this later, for the time being I'm trying to leave as much material to work with as possible, partly to safely creep up on final dimensions and partly to accommodate enough freedom to make further design decisions as work proceeds.

Having a fully rendered illustration of the intended spoon that can be reprinted as many times as needed is a really useful thing for a couple of reasons. I can cut and paste elements of the design back onto some carved away sections of the spoon and the shading, especially on the celtic knot-work gives me a ready reference both for redrawing on the carving when necessary and to avoid mistakes in the third dimension such as the 'under and overs' in the knot-work.

One simple tool I find useful at various stages and in lieu of sandpaper until the final finishing, is a trimming knife blade which can be used as a scraper just to tidy things up, like the exit points of drilled holes. It is always a good idea not to use any sand paper until all use of your edge tools is finished. If any sanding has been done prior to using your carving tools the this scraper can be used to scrape the area clear of any grit that may be embedded lurking to take the edge off your tools. Honing vigorously on just one side of the trimming knife blade imparts a slight burr on the edge and it will scrape more deeply producing fine shavings.

Another useful tool, if you don't have a carving gouge is a (cheap or reclaimed ) chisel ground with a round edge, it performs the same task as a gouge as you can see in the lower photo.