Over a year ago, I wrote a post about carving a wooden spoon from an oak tree that came down during a storm. Since then, we have had plenty of other trees come down, but I did not make much progress with my oak spoon. The wood ended up being too seasoned to carve easily, so I set the wood block and the idea of a spoon aside.
A couple of weeks ago, I finally got around to clearing a couple of Staghorn Sumac trees that had come down in our side pasture over the summer. Sumac is generally more of a shrub than a tree, but in this case the sumac trees had gotten quite large before their demise. As I was cutting up the limbs, I noticed the sawdust was green. The wood of sumac has a greenish hue, and its contrasting dark and light annual rings make it a great choice for carving. I set a small log aside as I worked, and brought it back to the garage, where I split out a section and used a pencil to trace the shape of a spoon. I roughed the shape out with my bandsaw.
This is the point where I had gotten with my oak spoon. The wood was still unseasoned and softer than the oak, and carved more easily. Over the course of a couple of days, I found an hour here and there, and had the whittling part complete. A little work with sandpaper, and it was done. I sealed the spoon with a couple of coats of butcher block oil, and it was ready for the kitchen drawer. It is a little crooked, but I followed the natural way the wood shavings came off from the spoon instead of forcing a shape onto the wood. Another item produced from our land.
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