Man cherry is hard :)

Rob Keeble

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GTA Ontario Canada
With this warm spell we having one could easily be duped into thinking its mid spring in Ontario right now, so i was not going to let the opportunity go by without at least a couple of hours of shop time.

So i wanted to try out my new scorp and make something small.

Well tool a small block of basswood and set about carving a teaspoon size spoon.

While bass is easy to carve heck the stuff i have is fury and splits so that was a total fail near end. Sorry no pic of that.

But some time ago Ryan suggested i try Cherry.

Oh boy, its the other extreme at least for stuff i have.

20170224_071817.jpg20170224_071807.jpg

I like a carving that shows it was hand carved, not all perfectly sanded, this is not complete by any stretch of imagination, it really was just a small test.

Certainly works ones hands and tool edges to cut this wood but the cuts are cleaner.

Now if there was only a nice in between wood.....

I think the bass wood i have is a questionable slab dunno.

The new scorp ....well i had to knock off some seriously sharp corners at the point the handle meets the tool. I am not delighted with it. But that could be me. Got a strong feeling i got sent a left hand one instead of right. Oh well as scorps go it was seriously cheap so no harm done.
 
I very rarely do any hand carving, but I do you a hand saw, rasp, chisel, and occasionally a gouge.

I do mostly electron burning and last few years CNC.

Cherry is an awesome wood to work with, and it is hard.

Finished beautifully.

I applaud you on the hand tooled spoon.
Yes there IS a certain appeal to the hand tooled marks left on the item.
 
Rob, I think that is why most of the carvers use green wood. I have left two wild cherry trees on the back fence line for the sole purpose of carving spoons from them. Just haven't gotten around to it yet. If I keep procrastinating I will be able to turn bowls from them!:eek:
 
Hah, oh the end grain. Yes what a pain. Changing the shape so the bowl is a bit flatter avoids some of that suffering :)

Rob, I think that is why most of the carvers use green wood.

Yup, if you can get it cut to ~close to shape~ while its green, let it dry a few weeks and then do really light the finishing cuts it is a lot easier. The green wood has similar cut quality problems as the softer stuff hence the two passes.

Looking at your scorp I think you ?might? also have slightly easier cuts if you work on the blade a bit. Basically round over the bevel transition to be a smooth curve allows it to slide through the wood a bit easier.

[edit: Not sure if yours is a mora but the same rough idea holds]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMg8GIAmWHU
 
Thanks guys, Ryan i will take a look at that bevel tomorrow. Mine is not a Mora , its a craft person made tool from etsy and comes from Bulgaria.

Think i might spring for a Mora and give it a try, although the mora knife i have is really thick blade and yet is sold as carving knife.
 
Think i might spring for a Mora and give it a try, although the mora knife i have is really thick blade and yet is sold as carving knife.

Yeah it seems the general consensus on the Mora hook knives is that the metal is good but the edge/blade profile requires a fair bit of work to make them work nicely. The pricier knives (which I have NOT sprung for.... so.. entirely second hand) tend to be better shaped. The Bulgarian one from the quick eyeball looked ~more~ like the mora profile than say the deepwoods knives (http://deepwoodsventures.com/en/25-spoon-carver) but the price certainly follows so if you don't mind taking 30m with a stone/emery cloth it still works out fairly well.
 
Cherry is hard to carve but not too much, its main drawback is that it is brittle, so ok as far as spoons are concerned but if you try to carve something more complex like the picture frame I made on the last swap the one must be very carefull not to cantilever the wood with the gouges as it will split very very easily. Light cuts that enter in and leave the wood without forcing are required.
 
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