Spoons! Spoons! Spoons! Do we really need more spoons?

Spoon Carving. It seems to be taking the Western World by storm. 

What is driving this phenomenon? I believe there are several things converging to give such life and vibrancy to the delightful craft of carving spoons. It is all about our need to re-connect with the natural world, with ourselves and with one another in our increasingly disconnected world.

Let me explain this a bit more to you:

1. We seek to re-engage with natural materials and the environment.

The plastic tide is turning. There is a move against plastic - now that we are learning about the long-term prognosis. Plastic does not break down into nothing, It never goes away. The particles just get small enough to pollute every aspect of the planet including the food chains and our bodies. Every piece of plastic which has ever been produced still exists.

Plastic is derived from the fossil fuel industry, which is increasingly "on the nose" as an energy source as the reality of human induced climate change slowly dawns on the masses, despite the efforts of the fossil fuel industry and its supporters claiming it to be nonsense. In contrast, trees grows through solar energy, which is embodied in the wood giving it the calorific value so valued by humanity through the ages as an energy source. About 50% of wood by weight is Carbon, captured from the air via photosynthesis. Trees are full of sequestered carbon. We need more wood in our lives again and less of those high energy/high carbon materials which are being forced upon us.  

We are surrounded by non-organic materials, trendy minimalism in our homes (all those bare white walls and surfaces are really very boring, bleak and soul-less), and a lack of natural organic materials. Aluminium, steel, glass, plastics and concrete, which all figure predominantly in modern houses and public buildings, are all high energy materials. Wood, by contrast, is an incredibly low-energy material. It is renewable and recyclable, a good thermal insulator and with wonderful acoustic properties. It is not all the same, with natural variability in appearance, properties, and character. Wood has life.

We are learning the health and well-being benefits of being in the outdoors, of spending time in forests, and breathing forest air rather than the stale and at times toxic air in our buildings. Recent studies have shown the reduction in stress - the calming effects - of having wooden panels and furniture and indoor plants in our public buildings, offices and homes.

In the midst of this growing disillusionment with the harsh and soulless world of plastics and artificial materials, hand crafts of all types are thriving. People are knitting and crocheting, doing pottery and sewing. They are basket weaving, blacksmithing, and working with wood. Spoon Carving is one of these heritage crafts experiencing a massive resurgence of interest in the Western World.
There is something delightfully primal and satisfying about starting with a fresh piece of tree, then using some simple ancient tools like an axe and a couple of knives to carve a functional individual spoon from that piece of wood.

  

2. We seek to re-engage with our innate need to be creative.

As people take up creative pastimes, they are scratching an itch deep inside - that basic human need to be creative with our minds and our hands, to express the inner longings of the soul. We long to make a difference and to see that expressed in tangible things. So much of what we do in our modern digital world has little to show for it.

You can bash away all day on a computer, but not have something tangible you can hold in your hands at the end of the day. You can go to endless meetings through a day, but not have accomplished anything tangible and tactile. You can be a cog in a machine, a part of a larger enterprise, meeting sales targets and Key Performance Indicators - but at the end of the day what do you personally have to show for your efforts? You could fall of the perch tomorrow and you will leave nothing much behind you. No meaningful legacy, not many tangible reminders of your brief existence on this planet.

In contrast, when a joiner builds a staircase, a gardener plants out a garden, or a mechanic re-builds a motor - each can say at the end "I did that" with contentment and pride. What they have done can be touched, looked at, used, enjoyed and experienced by others.

With so many people undertaking jobs and tasks which do not offer this lasting sense of accomplishment that can be viewed with the eye or touched with the hand, the return to hand crafts is providing a way to find meaning and a real sense of accomplishment. You can go to a shop and buy a new piece of furniture - or you can have a go at making a piece of furniture yourself, and feel the pride in having made it. It might be rougher than the store-bought one but you did it yourself. You learned things along the way, it structured your time in meaningful ways, gave you a sense of purpose, and gave you an opportunity to express yourself. The project helped fulfil your need to express yourself creatively.

The revival of interest in traditional wooden spoon carving via the Spoon Carving craze is offering a practical opportunity for people to express their creativity and to produce something which can be touched, viewed and enjoyed by others. Each spoon requires only a small investment in time, very little equipment, and is fun to make. Each wooden spoon being made provides an opportunity to creatively express ourselves, to nourish our inner artistic being, to develop our growing technical skill, and to even gain some affirmation from others around us. It is also a journey into simpler times, a taste of self-reliance - an almost primal experience as we craft something with our hands while expressing our creativity. So much satisfaction to be gained, and a nurturing of the soul.

The Spoon Carving Movement is providing a simple pathway and experience for many to use their hands and some basic tools, to express their creativity and produce things they can look at with satisfaction and say: "I made that". Each spoon is a creative expression of its maker.

• We seek to re-engage with our own bodies - to use our hands and minds.

There seems to be a gym on every corner in our suburbs these days. What does this say about us as a society? It reflects our current obsession with body image - combined with a growing awareness of the need to live more healthy lifestyles. While the gym-associated supplement industry feeds the extreme body image fad, the move towards greater activity with more healthy and less processed foods reflects a growing awareness of the need to live a more healthy lifestyle including a healthy diet. Two extreme ends of the spectrum!

As our lifestyles have become increasingly sedentary, the rush to gym membership provides a way to appease our guilt that we should regain some muscle tone somehow. Too many of us sit all day at desks on computers, then get in our cars to drive home were we sit in front of our TVs or computer games, or sit in our chairs poking touch-screens on our devices with our fingers. The loss of muscle tone corresponds with the diminishing stimulation and use of too many parts of our brains as well as our bodies.

In contrast hand crafting, including Spoon Carving, connects our brains to our fingers, to many muscle groups, and to other parts of our bodies. Most people, after their first go at spoon carving- whether with axes and knives, or with mallet, gouge and spokeshave - will complain of aching arms, hands and fingers. Their body is talking to them. In time, over more spoons, the sensation of physical tiredness is replaced with an awareness of the growing strength in the hands, arms and fingers. Combine this with the increasing sense of personal satisfaction in the skills being learned and demonstrated, the growing inner sense of accomplishment, the increasing affirmation of others, and we have the ingredients for a beneficial past time. While sitting in a chair carving spoons with a knive is still relatively sedentary, so many other physical and mental benefits flow from this activity. Funnily enough, the growing time spent carving spoons commonly corresponds to a reducing time aimlessly sitting staring at our digital devices!  

Spoon carving exercises our minds through the planning, decision making and problem solving processes. These take place during the whole process of the making of a spoon, as we map out and undertake the sequences of making, moving back and forth between the handle and the bowl, working with complex curves, transitional zones and even contrasting finials. Meanwhile the brain is trying to direct the complex array of muscle movements in the fingers, arms and upper body - as with tools in hand we try to replicate an image in our minds. An overcut here, a hidden knot there, a crankier-than-anticipated bit of grain there, and the problem solving process further exercises the mind again.

Just as physical exercise is well know for being beneficial for our mental health, so is being creative with our hands. The physical and mental health benefits which spoon carving offers is often underestimated. We like to joke that spoon carving is addictive - but it is no joke. It is true. So may good things are happening for us that the endorphins are pumping around in our bodies giving us many pleasurable sensations.

In my experience hand crafting, including spoon carving, is a wonderfully therapeutic activity, strangely meditative in nature despite the busyness of the mind and the hands. The therapeutic benefits are further multiplied when we engage in these activities together.

• We seek to re-engage with others.

Social Media promises to connect us together better. However all too often these platforms actually divide us by keeping our connections shallow and by making sure we mostly only connect with like minded people.  The algorithms behind the scenes ensure we remain in echo-chambers of like-mindedness thus denying the opportunity to be challenged and stimulated by engagement with people who may see and experience the world through a different window. The depth in the word "friend" is being lost to a shallow notion of connectedness.

In our cities, suburbs and towns the disconnect with others has been growing too. This has gradually crept up on us over the last couple of generations particularly, as our houses and homes have become secure bunkers with microclimates within their walls, in defiance of the weather outside. The arrival of the television in every home pulled us into our loungerooms. More recently, the digital device and our obsession with them has rapidly accelerated our disconnect with people around us. We don't even have eye contact anymore, as we stare down at our devices in trains and buses, waiting rooms and lifts, cafes and other public places. Head phones have further separated us from one another.

This increasing lack of engagement with others is one of the drivers behind the resurgence of interest in handcrafts. For despite this socially gloomy inward journey, many people are wanting - if not longing - to push back against this growing divide between us. People are coming together to sew together, to knit and to do blacksmithing. People are coming together to form Book Clubs, gardening groups, choirs, craft groups and walking groups. There have always been clubs and associations, which in recent years had often faced declining memberships, however many of the new gatherings are not necessarily formalised either. People are finding ways to re-engage with others around similar interests, and the handcrafts provide a wonderful vehicle for this with all the other benefits they offer.

Amid this social phenomena people are learning from one another, inspiring one another and sharing ideas and information. People are talking to one another, getting to know each other, and feeling less lonely. In the madness of our often busy and stressful lives, people are finding time to be creative together, to nourish their souls and nurture the souls of others. We are building community.

Within this fascinating social movement there are Spoon Carving groups popping up all over the Western World. People are gathering on a regular or adhoc basis to carve spoons together.   While spoons are fun, whether practical implements or art pieces in themselves, it is not really about the spoons. There is much more going on than that...

Do we really need more spoons? 

The spoon carving movement is meeting the needs of many to rediscover the delights of handling natural materials, and to work with those materials using our own hands and just a few simple tools. It is providing opportunities for people to be more physically active, even if in only a gentle way - to feel the satisfaction of tired muscles and an awareness of growing physical strength in our hands and arms. It is providing stimulus for our minds and food for our brains.

The spoon carving movement is helping people to find a creative expression for themselves while gaining the affirmation and encouragement of others. It is helping us to connect with others in the midst of our disconnected and increasingly polarised society. When we carve spoons together using hand tools, we can talk and laugh together, "chew the fat" and share our life stories.

When we carve spoons together, we are often building community - one spoon at a time.

Do we really need more spoons? I would suggest the answer is clear...

We at The Joy of Wood we really enjoy Spoon Carving.

At our Heritage Woodcraft Centre we run many spoon carving workshops, in both the Green Wood tradition and the techniques we use to work with seasoned hardwoods. The former is a great way to recycle tree prunings from parks and gardens. The latter is a wonderful way to recycle pre-used wood derived from buildings, floors and furniture.

Our Heritage Woodcraft Centre is the only place in Perth, Western Australia which specialises solely in teaching traditional woodworking hand skills and techniques. Nothing electric - just those hand tools and skills which have worked well for centuries.

We understand the personal therapeutic, social and community benefits of Spoon Carving.
Please come and join us in this pleasurable activity sometime!
          

The first "Introduction to Green Woodworking" Workshop!

What a delight! On Sunday Feb 9th I ran the first "Intro to Green Woodworking" Workshop at Earthwise in Subiaco. Fantastic. My trip to the USA last year was all about this - to increase my skills and experience in this exciting area so that I could then better share the joys of green woodworking with others here in Western Australia. This workshop, the first of many I hope, was the result of 3 years of dreaming, reading, learning, upskilling and preparation. A truly joyous day!

Carving spoons from green wood is a wonderfully relaxing activity.

We spent the day under the big mulberry tree at Earthwise. A very nice and appropriate location.

Why no green wood tradition here in Australia?
In North America and Europe, there is a long tradition in green woodworking going back many centuries. However here in Australia there appears to be very little tradition in green woodwork in our European history. Here in the early days of the Western Australian colony, roofing shingles were hewn from sheoak and jarrah trees, and railway sleepers were hewn from jarrah trees... Was it the hardness of the native timbers? Was it the fact that the first European colonists arrived as the industrial revolution was in full swing in Britain? Was it the lack of a peasantry on the land? Was it the lack of long cold winters? I'd like to understand the dynamic behind the apparent lack of green woodworking tradition and history here in Western Australia. Maybe some readers out there may be able to shed some light on this matter for me...

Damon uses a hewing hatchet to clean up his gnarly piece of timber.

Shaving horses.
In the preparation for this workshop, I had made 6 shaving horses. Three of these were in the English Bodger style, and three in the traditional "Dumbhead" style. These were all fabricated from dry wood, not green wood, as I was using up timber I had in my stocks and with limited time for the task. It was predominantly recycled packing crate pine from the Northern Hemisphere which was used, plus a few sticks pulled from my timber racks. For example, the legs were taken from a pile of Campaign Chair rail blanks that I have had set aside for about 20 years! Mostly Sheoak but some WA Peppermint as well.

The English Bodger model shavehorse. 

The legs on all the shavehorses have tapered tenons on the end which go into tapered holes. A tap with the mallet locks them in, and a tap with the mallet the other way knocks the legs out to aid storage when not in use. Six shave horses can take up a lot of space!

The Fabricated Dumb-Head model shavehorse.

Parked under the big mulberry tree, using a shavehorse was very relaxing...

Surena carefully shapes her Macadamia spoon handle with a drawknife.

The shave horse has great holding power. Sam shapes his spoon handle.

Obtaining the timber for the workshop.
In preparation for the workshop, I had been collecting an array of timber pieces for a couple of months. Lots of this would be experimental, as I am keen to find which are the best timbers to use which are freely available from parks and gardens here in Perth - especially from residential gardens. I had gathered up spoon sized pieces of wood including: Macadamia, Japanese Pepper, WA Peppermint, Cotoneaster, and Eucalyptus Caesia.

Trees and houses are removed from blocks in house demolitions for "urban infill".
Jacaranda tree being pulled down. Huge Lillypillys behind are next... 

Then I found there was a house around the corner from me being demolished by an excavator. (Such a waste of all that dry jarrah in the building's structure, but that's another story...)  
I spoke to the excavator driver and asked if the trees on the block were to be removed as well. He responded by saying that the whole block was to be cleared. I expressed interest in wood from the trunks of the trees on the block: Jacaranda, Cape Lilac, Bauhenia, and a type of Lillypilly. The result of my request? Two ute loads of log sections from these trees - a small proportion of the timber in the huge trees. Nice that the driver was pleased that the wood was to be used! Otherwise all of the trees including the stumps end up carted away in trucks along with the demolished house and outbuildings. A couple of cartons had sealed the deal.

The first of the two ute loads of timber from the demolished trees. 

The second ute load of log sections from the demolition.

Part of the smorgasbord of timber for the workshop.

In addition , some months ago I had obtained a large section of Sheoak log from a saw mill. I had commenced breaking it down long ago, but had left the timber under a tarp on the front lawn at home all this time. It was destined to go to the workshop long before the ute loads of timber from the demolition site!

Breaking down one of the two Sheoak log sections... many months ago.

I certainly had more wood now than I needed for the workshop!

Getting started - the workshop begins!

With all the participants assembled under the big Mulberry Tree at Earthwise, I began by welcoming the bods to this first of many green woodworking workshops. A personally very exciting occasion for me, as this was the culmination of 3 years of dreaming and preparation. I showed a bunch of green wood spoons that I had made, contrasting this with seasoned wood spoons, which I had learned to make 20 years previously. Next it was a quick explanation about basic tree anatomy. Outer Bark, Inner Bark, Cambium Layer, Sapwood, Heartwood, Pith, Medullary Rays, how trees grow, how we utilise the properties of timber, etc. 

After I had demonstrated the use of a froe and beetle to split open a section of timber ready to make a spoon, I went through some basic stuff around the use of a drawer knife on a shave horse, and then we looked at safe knife use. 

Time then for the gang to choose a piece of wood and start to have a play!    

There was plenty of wood to choose from!
Jacksie hews out a spoon blank beside part of the pile.

While the wood available had potential to do so much more than spoon making, everyone worked on spoons on the day. This would partly be due to the fact that I only had spoons as demo pieces. Next workshop we will make stools or something with legs I reckon.
I look forward to offering a future workshop down the track where we will make Joynt Stools. Thanks for the inspiration Peter Follansbee! Meanwhile, we will work up to that by playing around making a growing range of other things with green wood first...

Graeme gets into using the drawer knife. Such a wonderful tool!

The Hatchet Work.
Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of the first step - the riving (splitting) the log sections apart with beetle and froe. Once the blanks have been formed in this manner, the next step is to hew the shape and remove the waste using hewing hatchets. I have a variety of hatchets, from the very fancy Gransfors Brux Carving Hatchet to some nice old broad hatchets I brought back from the USA, to garden variety hatchets which have be re-ground to create quite acceptable hewing tools. Whatever type it is, the key to a hatchet's performance is really in the bevel grinding more than the honing of the edge. Being razor sharp of course is pretty important!
The participants were encouraged to try out as many of the hatchets as they liked.

The Catoneaster proved to be the unfriendliest wood on the day - very interlocking grain!

The idea with the hatchet work is to use the tool to efficiently and accurately remove as much of the waste as possible. This applies to spoon making too.

Sue gets in the swing of the hatchet work.

The knife work.
The hatchet work looks dangerous, but it is the knife work which can most easily inflict the damage! There are a number of different knife strokes/techniques used in spoon carving. Each of these are controlled cuts, making them safe. That's the theory. However when starting on the journey, it is easy to nick yourself as you gain experience and develop the techniques! We went through a good few band-aids during the day.

Sue does a straight-armed "power cut" to remove waste with a Sloyd knife. 

Levering actions with the thumbs and fingers are safe, controlled, and effective. 

It's a very relaxing thing, carving spoons with knives!

Spot the bandaids in the dappled light of the mulberry tree. 

A good start to our Green Woodworking journey.
While no spoons were totally completed on the day (a couple were starting to be dried in the microwave ready for their final clean-up), it was a great introduction to the joys of messing about with green wood. Thanks to all the participants who took part in this experiment.

Ian contemplates the spoon he was making... 

Special thanks to Ian for bringing along some additional tools. He had a froe, draw knives, some carving knives, a fantastic Austrian bearded broad axe (very nice!) and more. His previous experience, his gear, and buckets of enthusiasm were an asset on the day! Thanks Ian.
 

We had a great day together messing about under the mulberry tree.

Keep an eye out for more green woodworking opportunities. This was just the start of a whole new direction for Joy of Wood activities. Wood recycling has always been an important part of the message - packing crates, pallets, other timber rescued from the waste stream. We use recycled wood for all of the other workshops we run. This new territory opens up the potential for the recycling of garden trees which would otherwise be chipped for mulch or would just be discarded into landfill.

It is a sad fact that too many trees are being removed from our city. Better that the timber is utilised, value added, rather than just getting tossed. The challenge now is to try out so many different trees for their properties and use potential!

I invite you to join us on this exciting journey...

Have Green Wood, will have a great time crafting stuff!

Making a spoon from a bent stick. Green woodworking delights.

While spending Christmas/New Year in Albany, Western Australia, I gave a hand to help with some gardening in a friend's garden. (For those of you readers in the northern hemisphere, this time of the year is early summer. While you were hunkered down hiding from the cold singing carols around the fire in your winter woollies, we were having Christmas lunch at the beach under a gazebo to save us from the scorching sun.)

One of the garden plants we were cutting back was a Eucalyptus caesia. This species of eucalypt is grown as a decorative garden plant, with silvery leaves, drooping foliage, and beautiful bright red flowers. In its natural habitat it grows in arid areas as a sparse spindly small tree or mallee. There are two main forms in cultivation: the really weeping version and a more upright version. The one we were cutting back was the more upright. The wood is very dense, even outside of its normal habitat.

An example of the version with with a more weeping habit.
Pic thanks to Wikipedia.

The wood informs the spoon.

While up the ladder with the saw, the bent pieces of wood around about were talking to me. There's a couple of spoons in there, the tree was whispering to me... 

When I made the first spoon from this tree, using a similar bent piece, I did not think would work. So I didn't take any pics along the way. That was a dopey move, as the spoon worked out beautifully!

This was the first spoon... or is it a mini-ladle?

So it was time to have another go, using another one of the crooks.

This time, I was going to take pics throughout the process... well, I mostly remembered.

Two crooks to give up two spoons, hopefully.

Love that right angle bend! The aim was to split it down the guts to get a spoon.

The piece was split down the middle with a froe. Where is the picture?...oops. The split fortunately went around the bend. Then I used a nice little hatchet to remove the waste. So far so good!

Hewing with the hatchet completed. Now for some knife work.

After the preliminary knife work, the next step was to start hollowing the bowl, using a small gouge.

Starting the bowl with a small gouge. This work is all done on the knee.

Enough of the gouge for now... time to change to the hook knife.

The hook knife does a great job of enlarging the bowl. 

With the bowl shaping completed for now, it is back to the Sloyd knife for the shaping of the spoon.

After a bit of knife work, the spoon is shaped ready for drying.
When dry it will then be further shaped using the knives, rasps and then sandpaper. 

When the wood is green, it is softer and easier to work. When the wood has been dried, it is much harder and so not as easy to work. 

A bit of theory about green verses dry wood.

Wood in the living tree is totally saturated with water. It is found in the wall of the cell and it fills the voids in the cells themselves. When the plant is no longer alive, the moisture content of the wood tries to reach an equilibrium with the moisture content of the air around it, so the wood starts to dry out. The "free water" in the cell cavity tends to disappear before the water in the cell walls does. As the cells dry out, they shrink - some woods more than others. This is what causes "checking" or cracks in the wood - when it dries out too quickly, and the resulting stresses tear the cells apart. Various timber species behave differently, but as a general rule of thumb the slower the rate of drying and the smaller the section of timber, the less likely it is to split as it dries and shrinks. This is why Australian hardwood sawmills keep their log stockpiles under sprinklers while waiting to break them down through the saws - keeping them damp helps to reduce the de-grade of the logs caused by heavy checking. 

Checking still visible,though greatly reduced, on the ends of these hardwood logs in a stockpile.

Once milled into smaller dimensions, these sticks are then dried in the air in stacks and/or are dried in kilns (in order to push the moisture content lower than the ambient moisture content of the air.) Whether being air dried or kiln dried, the timber is piled in stacks which allow the even circulation of air around them, to ensure an even rate of moisture loss.

Sawn timber "stripped out" in stacks.The air circulation gaps on each side and face of every stick helps promote even drying.

Working wood while it is still green has been used for millennia by people and communities all around the world. Differing moisture contents in components is used to ensure joints tighten over time, like in Windsor Chairs. This knowledge was accumulated and used for many centuries. 

Most modern furniture and construction timbers are dried before use - often kiln dried. 

In regards to our spoon, working the wood while green makes it easier to carve. Reducing the dimensions of the material almost to the finished article, ready for drying (as in the photo below), will help reduce the chances of checking as it dries. 

Most of the shaping done. Time to dry it.

Drying the green spoon.

Given the importance of drying slowly to help reduce checking, there are several ways to do this. I understand that the Swedes used to rub boiled potato into the spoon and leave it in a warm place by the fire for a night or two to dry the spoon. Burying the spoon in green sawdust/shavings will help it dry slowly over a period of time as the sawdust/shavings dry. Putting the spoon in a plastic bag and removing it for a few hours each day will also help with a slow controlled reduction of moisture content over time. Then there is the microwave... 

The advantage of the microwave is that it can dry the wood in a matter of minutes rather than days - but it can also cook the wood so much that it splits it. So you must be careful. Different wood species will not all behave the same in the microwave. While in the USA, I dried a Black Birch spoon in three bursts of 90 seconds with about 10 minutes between each burst.  The first Euc.Caesia spoon I made took about 10 bursts of 10 seconds. When I did an initial 20 second burst on the second spoon I nearly destroyed it. As a consequence it still bears some small cracking. This very hard wood needs to be dried gently in  the microwave. It was a good lesson for me... no bursts over 10 seconds with this particular wood. It's all part of my continuing experiment with a range of woods.

The slight sideways curve in the handle emerged during the drying process.
It reflects tension in the wood.

How do you know the wood is dry? With these small bits, the general rule of thumb is to place it on your cheek when it has cooled. If it feels cold, it is still green, as moisture is evaporating from it. When it no longer feels cool on the cheek, it is probably dry enough.

The final shaping of the spoon.

With the wood dried, it could now be successfully filed and sanded to the final shape, texture and finish. I started with a half round file or fine rasp, The next stage was to sand the spoon surfaces all over to remove any marks left by the filing, to even out any bumps and unevenness, and to ensure there are nice smooth flowing curves and shapes in the handle, bowl and the transitions.

Sanding and Filing Dust. A sure sign that the wood is dry.

With some woods, the initial knife work before drying will require hardly any additional post-drying work with rasp of abrasive paper. Some tougher woods, like the Eucalyptus Caesia being used to make this spoon, cannot readily be shaped by knife alone to a good enough finish to avoid filing and sanding.

Lookin' good.

Completed spoon, ready for oiling.

Applying a finish to the spoon. 

A food safe oil finish is best. For these spoons I soaked them in a mix of Orange Oil and Pure Gum Turpentine, in a ratio of 3:1. The latter is a solvent which helps the Orange Oil to penetrate more deeply. After the soaking, any residual excess oil was ragged off. The resulting finish protects the wood,, gives it a nice clean matt finish, and makes it look like a million dollars. Nice.  

Two beautiful spoons made from two crooks of Eucalyptus Caesia. 

The spoon on the left in the pic above was the first spoon I made, when I didn't think it would work. The second spoon, on the right, is the one whose making process I have documented in this story. 

Too good to use? Nah...Both of them would be ideal for taking olives from a jar!