I’ve just finished this plum eating spoon which I’m please with. I’m getting to grips with the synergies between understanding the wood, form (what shapes and lines come together to make a spoon), working with tools (sharpness and hold) and the unknowable element I am happy to call ‘magic’!
As is often the case, the story behind the wood brings me a satisfaction that deepens the carving experience, even though this wood brings some sadness with it. Perhaps all wood does, once it has stopped being a tree? The plum was a dying tree in the garden of a man who recently moved into a hospice. I was working as part of a gardening team tasked with clearing up the garden with a view to selling the house, and was given permission to fell the tree for spoons.
The trunk was about 6 inches in diameter and about 7 foot high and i could see from the get-go it wasn’t going to cleave straight; and so it was, a spiralling growth pattern revealed that cleaved into twisted halves. The wood is beautiful, a richness and colour to it that is so pleasing after carving basswood for a bit too long. At the edges, and here and there through the woo, a dark purple ( or plum!) stain from the sap was visible that gives an overall feeling of raspberry ripple ice cream!. Perhaps I could have used a different cleaving technique or instead used a saw to cut the wood, but I had what i had, and made the best of it. Once I started carving away with my axe the spoon began to emerge.
There is still room for improvement of course but I like the spoon pattern and will use it to shape other spoons from the tree.
Of course a good spoon needs a good finish and having got to the end of the raw linseed oil I found in Poppa’s workshop I was delighted to find a small tin of Walnut Oil (from Lee Valley in Ottawa) hiding away behind paint thinners and other wood preservatives. I have also wanted to combine my oil with beeswax to make something more protective and had some kindly given to me from Larry at Humber Valley Honey that has been sitting on my desk for some time. Using a recipe from Garden Betty I made up our first batch of Mount Wolfe Farm Spoon Butter as well. I’m now wondering if I can make some locally sourced walnut oil from the black walnuts that hammer down on the roof every Autumn, so our Spoon Butter would be a truly sustainable product!
James T Jones 