Thread: Celtic Dragon Lovespoon

fantastic

Your spoon is amazing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More beautiful, beautiful work

Simply Wow!

Stunning!!!

Great work. Thanks for showing.

Thank you for the encouraging comments everyone.

just lovely

Stunning work - bet it was fun polishing all that detail

Very Beautiful!!!

Beautiful. I must find my catalog of spoon motifs and see what I can comprehend.

A question about the wood:

In your opinion, is the harder/hardest of woods an advantage here? Durability during the actual carving process? I can't imagine any of the woods I use holding anything like the details you have crafted.

Originally Posted by Robson Valley

A question about the wood:

In your opinion, is the harder/hardest of woods an advantage here? Durability during the actual carving process? I can't imagine any of the woods I use holding anything like the details you have crafted.

It's a bit like Summer and Winter here in Australia... whichever season you're not currently in, seems the best. I've complained of my timber being too hard and I've complained of it being too soft, but thankfully there are many beautiful timbers available. And for me, many fine-grained timbers yet untried. I think fine grain is what to look for, hard or soft.

Generally I prefer harder timbers, the extra hardness offers that extra bit of resistance that can be an aid to control, you are less likely to take too big a slice and it's easier to avoid the worst consequences of tear-out. I like rock maple and walnut, privet is also excellent to carve.

As for holding detail, I think other attributes in the timber are more responsible for the detail holding up than hardness. It seems to me that the tightness of the grain (more often the case with harder timbers I agree) is what you want for detail. I carved a lovespoon (also featuring a dragon) in white beech and it held the detail well even though it was very soft.

By the way this white beech is nothing like european beech, it is a soft waxy timber highly prized in Australia for its ease of carving. It also seemed to have a 'toughness' or resistance to breakage, though with the design for this particular spoon I was prone to great care. (Here is a link to my blog entries for this spoon.)

I'm still learning the characteristics of the various timbers available to me and so far I'm finding that each has to be taken on its own merits. My answer has been all over the place, I know, but so far that's what I've found to be the nature of the case.

What timbers have you tried?

I've not heard of Saffron Heart before. Is it called something else? How did it carve? Very curious...

Originally Posted by Bespoken

I've not heard of Saffron Heart before. Is it called something else? How did it carve? Very curious...

Halfordia kendack, another common name is 'Southern Ghittoe'. I get it from Trend Timbers. It is very hard, has long fibres, a bit splintery, the grain is straight and very slightly open, so it holds detail well. It seems to carve well but it's heavy going ( I am only working on small scale carvings and using palm tools ).

I didn't need to re-hone my tools very often so it didn't seem to dull edge tools excessively. It is really tough on scroll saw blades, at 25mm thick, though (I was glad when I'd finished, half the time the blade seemed to be 'marking time') impossible to get a consistent vertical cut because the blade tended to bow in the cut. This caused me problems getting a consistent thickness front to back with the knot work.

It takes a good finish, you can polish it to a good shine with fine abrasive alone but 'EEE polish' really brings up a nice finish and any oil brings out the beautiful golden colour.

I originally bought it to use as struts for a stylised biplane toy design I had in mind because of its brilliant colour and its toughness in narrow sections. Being a complementary colour it would go well with purple heart. It has a similar texture, so maybe that's why they call it saffron heart.