'Cariad' Welsh Lovespoon Finished

The 'cariad' Spoon is now finished. I changed my mind about trying to fill the grain of the walnut and decided a flattish, subtle sheen would look best in this dark wood. Smooth and inviting to the touch but without the myriad of specular highlights that might confusingly emanate from – all the ridges, of all the components, at all their various levels, all at once – if a high gloss finish was used.

There are times when a much higher gloss would be appropriate but with the elements of visual interest being at so many different levels in the carving, a finish that allows the light to gradually and softly reflect from the surfaces each in their own turn is the best way, in this case, for the carving to tell its story. The slight openness of grain in the walnut still remains as I have used a penetrating finishing oil consisting mostly of true tung oil and other organic oils. This allows the woodiness of the walnut to remain un-submerged but simply modified in a way natural to the timber.

Daylight and indoor lighting bring out some different colour moods from the dark walnut.

The grain pattern of the walnut by way of 'happy accident' provided the banded patterning on the foremost canadian goose in a very useful way helping to establish its identity at least a little, where shape alone was all that the dark timber could be hoped to provide.

The back of the spoon shows the re-growing tree stump, the heart motif and the merging of the rocks, celtic knots and gear fragments. With the bowl of the spoon joining up through the connecting rod to the rocks.

Resting just above the bowl of the spoon is the captured ring representing the 'Iron Ring' worn by Canadian engineers.

Cariad Lovespoon, finishing begun

The 'Cariad' Welsh Lovespoon has now been completely carved and the sanding and finishing process has begun.

Any further work with edge tools, which should only be a little tidying up here and there, will be done with small 'disposable' blades (of course even these can be re-honed to acceptable sharpness again) so that the abrasive particles left on the timber will not dull my carving tools. If I do need to do any more carving work with my usual tools then I will first scrape the area with a trimming knife blade to remove any remaining abrasive particles.

To begin the finishing I will commence with 240 grit paper and move up to 1200 in stages. This might seem excessively fine but I believe it helps to achieve the kind of finish I'm after.

I will be using a tung oil based Danish Oil finish applied with a small brush and worked with wet and dry abrasive at the 400 grit stage to fill the grain prior to the final coat. The final finish will be a wax polish to bring up just the right sheen.

When the work has been finished to the right level, then the play of light on the surface should bring out the details in the carving and the beauty of the timber, much more so than can be seen at this stage.

Some types of carving are best not sanded, letting the tool marks show and bear witness to the carver's interaction with the tools and the wood. In this case and possibly with love spoons in general I think a fine finish looks best. I can't articulate why this seems to be the case, perhaps it is the scale of the work, how close a scrutiny it invites or how much it asks to be felt in the hands. It all depends on what achieves the most pleasing result and suits the work best.

Cariad Lovespoon Back on Track

Most of the main details of the 'Cariad ' Welsh lovespoon have been roughed out now, including the reverse side of the spoon. Each element has been established on its level in the multi-layered design. Some teeth still need to be added to the gearwheel and pinion, the 'iron ring' needs to be carved and separated from the lower neck of the spoon and the bowl of the spoon needs to be fully roughed out.

Then remains the long and important task of refining all the shapes, first with edged carving tools, then with fine rifflers and needle files, before final finishing is done with a series of finer and finer grit, wet and dry abrasive papers, until a silky gloss is obtained. Then at last the final finishing with danish oil and polishing with wax.

You will probably have noticed the change in colour of the spoon at this stage. The cherry 'Cariad' spoon now known as the 'learning experience spoon' has been replaced with the walnut version of the 'Cariad' spoon. The Cherry spoon, due to some earlier problems in planning a workable procedure, had started to deviate from the original design in ways that I was not happy with. The top area of the spoon with the links and sun motif had been very cramped and ultimately led to a reshaping of the rays that basically spoilt that part of the spoon. I had no choice but to start over, and as I could not get hold of another piece of cherry quickly, went back to a nice piece of walnut I already had and to a new spoon, slightly scaled up in size and more closely following the original design.

The walnut has not proved to be so much a problem for holding fine detail, as I had first thought and the darker colour seems also to work well with this design.

There is a little more detail work to be done on the Geese, mountain and the gate at this stage and then the finer finishing. It's difficult to see here but the grain in the walnut has shown a fortunate presence of figure on the side of the front Goose, closely resembling the banding on its wings and body. When final polishing is done the figure in this timber will be clearly seen and its present drab appearance will be replaced by the sheen of polished walnut.

Some work has now also been done on the back of the spoon with motifs added to make use of the reversed shapes that are made by the lettering and the goose wings intersecting the sun's rays on the other side.

The back of the spoon has been roughed out and features some different motifs presented in a slightly more abstract way. The sun with its rays, now tops a regrowing tree stump, the roots of which blend into a looser montage of knot pieces, gear fragments and rocks with the connecting rod merging into the neck of the spoon bowl.

The re-growing tree stump is a favourite motif of mine and I have used it as the signature piece in hand-crafted wooden jigsaw puzzles that I have made in the past. Apart from the obvious meaning a re-growing tree stump conveys, like renewal and vital continuation, it symbolises, in the book of Jeremiah and other places in scripture, the promised Messiah Jesus, and the final establishment of his eternal kingdom at the end of this age. A kingdom into which all people are now invited at his expense and as his cherished possession.

Roughing out 'Cariad' Welsh Lovespoon

Fretting out all the inside cuts for the lettering, the celtic knot-work and the gear wheels has been a bit of a problem. My attempt to make things a little easier for the scroll saw work, by cutting away much of the waste on the underside, only created other problems. I no longer had a stable platform and even after taking the precautions that I had foreseen these were barely enough to make cutting possible. The job did get done of course but with much more difficulty than I had envisaged. The lesson learned is to leave a good solid base on the work for the scrolling even if it means a very slow progress through the thicker timber.

The precautions that I was able to take, to try and provide, what I thought would be a completely stable platform, was to keep all the shaped off-cuts from any previous cutting (always a good idea) and reassemble the block from these. I had begun to do this prior to drilling, on the drill press, the entry holes for the scroll saw blade. Then with clear packing tape and hot-melt glue, I re-assembled the block.

Even with the block re-assembled there was enough flex in the assembly to make the cutting difficult, requiring extreme concentration constant stopping and a cautious cutting a little further from the line than I normally would. In some areas, where overlaying elements are to be carved and no saw piercing was possible, it would be only by carving that the forms could be established. So likewise I would simply have to carve up to the lines where I hadn't dared too close a cut.

With Most of the scroll sawing done I have started roughing out the major forms and establishing them at their various levels relative to one another, by carving their outlines, 'moving them down' in relation one another and re-carving as I go.

I had taken advice from David Western about the suitability of cherry for this piece. David had warned that apart from its general suitability for the particular needs of this piece and its sheer hardness, cherry had a tendency to be a bit splintery. I have found this to be the case. The timber cuts very crisply and cleanly with the grain but not so well across the grain where the fibres tend to separate into a slightly splintery texture. These areas where they occur, I notice, are easily cleaned up with some fine filing with a needle file, so I am confident that the long and careful finishing process is going to eventually bring up a surface that will do justice to a beautiful piece of timber.

So I will be continuing to rough out all the forms, then thinning down the knot-work and working the back of the spoon into the total design and sometimes refining some parts as I go to see how things are going to look.

'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.

Cutting Outline for 'Cariad' Welsh Lovespoon

Ripping Down the Block on the Band Saw

With the piece of european cherry sawn to the right dimensions, it is time to cut the outline on the scroll saw. A hand fret saw could be used but even with a scroll saw it would be heavy going with a piece of cherry nearly an inch and a half thick.

Heavier going than I thought, because ripping down the block to a thickness the scroll saw could manage and yet still have it thick enough for carving options, resulted in a slightly curved cut from the band saw that I couldn't afford to level without losing desired thickness.

The surface that I attached the pattern to, with spray adhesive, had been planed smooth and straight. The sides were also dressed square with the face. This is worth doing if possible for

a deeply layered carving like this, because it can make some things easier. The uneven face off the band saw, that would now rest on the scroll saw table however, was now not going to make cutting easy.

The one side of the outline was cut successfully even though with less ease than could have been. Surprisingly it only took three blades and only one of those was an actual breakage. During the next session cutting the other side of the outline, I replaced the blade, that I thought would be very dull by now, and started cutting.

Progress was incredibly slow... Could it be that the cherry was even denser in this area of the board ? Or is there a variation in the cutting effectiveness from one blade to another, even of the same type ?.. No and yes... (sort of). The blade you put in back to front, does in fact cut less efficiently than another of the same type!

Another tip is; don't mistake persistence with

sheer unthinking stubbornness, there might be a reason why things don't go as expected other than 'the tools or materials have somehow changed'.

The blade, with brutal force, was made to 'cut' through nearly an inch of, and inch and a half thick board of cherry, with no more teeth available than a rooster, before I decided to change the blade.

Well change it around anyway. I reinserted the now banana shaped blade and continued to cut about half the other side before the 'Flying Dutchman' brand penguin silver#5 blade finally broke. – Are these blades tough or what ? – The rest of the cutting went well.

Half the Outline Cut and the Spoon Profile Marked Out

Having squared the sides, facilitated the laying out the profile of the spoon on one side, which could then be cut off in one piece and used, both as reference and for reassembling the block, prior to cutting and shaping the profile of the spoon. Squaring the sides also makes it easy to gauge lines parallel to the edge, just by gripping a pencil tightly a certain distance from the edge and spacing it with the position of other fingers sliding against the other face as you slide your hand along. Not a lot of layout is always necessary with lovespoons and most of the work is intuitive, with at least some of the planning evolving as the work proceeds. It's still a good idea to plan as much as possible and include as many guides as possible... just expect the unexpected.

With both sides of the outline cut and the profile marked out it's time to reassemble the block with clear packing tape and begin shaping the profile on the band saw. It might have been a good time to drill for all the inside cuts at this point but some of these areas are quite small and I don't trust my drill press to drill accurately to a great depth with a fine bit.

I also want to reduce the thickness of the blank in some places to make cutting easier on the scroll saw, especially if finer blades are used and possibly if a hand fret saw or even piercing saw is needed for tricky spots.

shaping the profile will remove much of the pattern but I'm expecting to do this often, as I go, any way and I can always cut pieces as templates from any extra prints of the pattern

I make along the way ... I don't find re-drawing too much a problem though and If I did, then I would find a way to avoid it.

The reassembled block can be worked on with a hand saw making intersecting straight cuts to remove large volumes of timber in shaping the rough form of the spoon's profile but things are much quicker using the band saw. The band saw makes it easier, not just because it can make curving cuts, but also because it can produce fairly accurate vertical cuts quickly, where you can observe them approaching your marked lines, to be stopped just where you want.

I used a 3 tpi half inch blade, the aggressive cut of which, enabled a nibbling away, by straight cuts, of many of the tightly curved areas. I had a 3mm blade that might have navigated many of the curves but I wasn't sure of cutting four inches of cherry, without a breakage, if a tight spot eventuated.

By taking it slowly and carefully with the large blade, easing the passage of the blade with multiple straight cuts and sometimes cutting a half inch space to allow entry for the blade to make rip cuts, parallel to the long edge, I was able to effectively, if not prettily, shape the profile.

Shaping the Profile on the Band Saw

Shaping the Profile on the Band Saw

The blank roughly shaped

The next step will be back to the scroll saw after some pattern cutting and pasting and or re-drawing – plus drilling. The thinner timber to scroll of course comes with the severe under cutting of just that part of the blank, that rests on the scroll saw table. To remedy this I will have to set up a temporary false table on the scroll saw and then, there should be no problem. This could have made things a bit easier cutting out the outline... If i'd thought of it at the time.