Sunday, June 21, 2009

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!

5 comments:

  1. That is a beautiful spoon Rovert! Man the detail! Looks like you recovered from the break well, don't think I could of, still would be crying!

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  2. Nice save on the spoon--it's beautiful! As a fledgling carver, I'm glad to know that there's a way to salvage projects that might otherwise end up in the cut off bin.

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  3. Thanks, Corey!

    Kari, that is why I do this blog. Most established carvers either don't make mistakes (yeah, right!) or they don't tell anyone about them. Not good for the marketing image.

    I want to show that most goofs are not fatal to the piece being worked on. There are ways to salvage them. You just need to show a little imagination and perseverance.

    Bob

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  4. The cranes are Awesome! On the blow up picture I got dizzy trying to follow the knoted necks! Wonderful! Oh! And I have had the worst luck with superglue. Then again the pieces I break off tend to be larger. Dispite my bad luck, I still keep a tube or two around ( for small cuts to my hands...it works better than bandaids)

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