Eagle Lovespoon Finished -- At Last

Finally I got up the gumption to finish the Eagle Lovespoon. Took long enough!

For those of you, like me, who have forgotten what the earlier photos looked like, you can go here and here.

So, when we last saw this spoon, about all I had left to do was to finish the kissing cranes, clean up the back and do a general cleanup overall. Carving the cranes went amazingly well. I was working on the very last piercing and had not broken anything! I was thinking, "By golly, I'm going to get through this whole spoon without a single break! Whereupon I broke it.

Aaarrgh! The knife slipped, went right through the neck and twisted breaking the neck in multiple pieces. Small pieces. My wife stopped me from head-butting the wall before I put a dent in it -- the wall, not my head. I was able to find enough of the pieces to put it back together with "The Carver's Best Friend", superglue.

After that, things went swimmingly.

As you can see, the only carving I did on the back of the spoon was on the clover leaves/hearts. The rest I just smoothed out with my knife and champfered the edges to give it a finished look. As with all my work I stayed well away from the devil's paper. The finish is straight from the knife. The "finish" was a coating of Williamsville Wax worked into the nooks and crannys with a toothbrush and a soft cloth.

So there you have it. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be due in large part to the knives made by my friend Carl Johnson, the Carver/Tuner From Nowhere.

Since I don't use a scroll saw to do the piercings, using only knives, my ability to do the knotwork like in the cranes necks would be severely limited if not impossible without these "micro" detail knives. So a big thanks to Carl.

Until next time, let the chips fly!