Oak Bowl & Spoon

 

I made this little bowl (it's only about 120mm in diameter) to try out my new hollowing scraper.

The spoon I made yesterday from a small scrap of oak, just because it was there and I had nothing else to do.

Hollowing Tool Saga

 After struggling with hollowing a couple of cups, I thought I should buy myself a proper hollowing tool set. And so I went and had a look on Bangood, where I thought I could probably pick something up.

Sure enough, I found something that looked likely. This is what I thought I was buying:

This, however, is what I was actually buying:

I checked back on the page I'd ordered from, and after careful examination determined that they had not actually lied, they'd just presented the product in a very misleading way. So, that's it for me and Bangood; they've failed me one time too many, and I won't be doing business with them again.

Anyway, now my new hollowing tool needed a handle, and My friend Nick came to the rescue by turning a very nice brass (or maybe bronze, we're not 100% sure) ferrule for me.

The slot in the end supports the bar of the tool so that it can't twist, and the screws through the ferrule into the handle's tenon prevents the whole ferrule twisting.

I turned up a nice chunky, meaty handle and stained it. One of these days I probably should give it a few coats of shellac as well.

It got its first outing today, and I made this simple little oak bowl, about 120mm in diameter and 35mm thick, from rim to foot.

I foresee it getting quite a bit of use, so I'd probably better buy some more carbide cutting tips.

Not from Bangood though.

Long Spoon

 

On the principle that there can never be too many spoons, I made another spoon, out of a bit of rimu this time.

It's quite a long spoon at 420mm, but probably still not long enough to safely sup with the devil. However, my experience in that area is pretty limited.

Chaos Critter Doodle

 

This sort of thing is mindlessly recreational. It requires not much brain, since it's not representing anything recognisable, and there can be no mistakes really, since any and every little scribble can be absorbed somehow.

It's the essence of doodling.

Spoon

 

Since I had nothing much else to do, I made a spoon from a scrap of some unidentified wood.

It's about 170mm long and 70mm wide.

One of these days I must get around to making myself a round-ended scraper for smoothing out the bowls of things like this. But it is not this day.

Copper ferruled handle

 

I turned this little oak handle from a scrap fished out of the rubbish for no particular reason but to experiment with using some 15mm copper tube as a ferrule. It works pretty well for small pieces like this.

I might find a use for it some day, but it would be no good as a general purpose chisel handle or the like — the piece of oak has some pretty serious checking going on, so it probably wouldn't survive much mallet work. It might be okay for a paring chisel that wouldn't get much walloping. I don't have a suitable blade right now, but you never know what might turn up.

It's about 140mm long.

Later...

I put a chainsaw file in it.

Maybe it would have been a better idea to get a file that fits my actual chainsaw blade, but I'm not one to truckle to The Man like that.