Tag: cherry

Posted on

How Much Cherry? How many pieces of treen?

The featured image shows the current batch of treen destined to be Christmas presents for family and friends. Fall is treen season. I pause from other work to dig through the cherry splits for good spoon wood.

These past few years, I’ve been working through a bountiful stock of native cherry. It was cut about two years ago and is still not totally dry, but dry enough for me to use ( according to my moisture meter). The average length is 15 – 18 inches, but if I need larger stock, there are some unsawn logs available to me. For most of what I carve firewood length is excellent, and that’s what the cherry pile originated as; firewood. When my firewwod provider told me there was cherry in the load I instantly started digging for it.
If you sell treen it’s essential to get an idea of what you can get out of a split, log, or plank. Wood, like I am working with, has bark, sapwood, wane, knots, cracks, and all sorts of imperfections in it. But, it’s gorgeous wood after you get rid of the faults. I begin the work by taking a maul and a froe to the large splits of wood. In reducing the bigger wedges, I have my first opportunity to evaluate what is inside. All that is rejected at this stage is lovely kindling for the woodstove. I gradually work the piece into a large blank, as you see at the top in the photo below. If there are no severe checks or significant splits in the wood, I can proceed.

Below the blank is a partially worked piece. The blank has been refined into a general the general shape of a dipper or deep spoon.
Below the rough out is a completed spoon. With luck and some careful cutting, I can get several products out of one blank. The examples shown are a bowl scraper and a spatula. You do not always get lucky, and lots of time, there are hidden knots, cracks, or other flaws that mean you have one piece and a pile of kindling. I heat with wood; cherry kindling is always welcome.
I use my jointer to get a flat surface if the splitting doesn’t provide one. After this, it’s off to the bandsaw to refine the shape a bit. Once upon a time, I did much of this work with a shave. Selling good volumes of treen at boat shows ( not everyone wants a boat portrait, you know!) dissuaded me from this. Not to worry. There is still much hand tool work to take a rough blank and turn it into an elegant spoon.

Posted on

Cherry – the versatile wood

The photo for the featured image was just taken this morning. I was finishing a batch of cherry treen. If it’s fall it’s time for me to start making treen for those friends who’ve requested spoons, spatulas, or spreaders for the holidays. The image illustrates four of the reasons I love cherry.

Cherry has a lovely color repertoire depending on the circumstance of the tree’s growth. Color, grain and hardness vary widely. Cherry is durable, and moderately hard to carve, but not so hard that it’s a a trial. In addition to treen I’ve done chip carving in cherry, and it’s my “go to” wood for ship and boat portraits. There is no other wood that I have had such an intimate and long lasting relationship with. I love our native New England cherry and I’m excessively fond of the Alleghenny cherry that I get from Pennsylvania.

In recent years I’ve had difficulty getting the wider planks I prefer for portraits and now regularly joint panels from narrower stock. Perhaps, that is a fifth reason why I love cherry; once glued properly it holds together well.

If you haven’t tried cherry because you thought it too hard I’d advise getting a sample and allowing the wood to appeal to you.

  • Celtic knot design in cherry
  • Fantasy ship
Posted on

Gifts

From firewood to present. It’s a nice transition. As I pulled the bright reddish cherry from the piles of cordwood I began to get excited. I recognized some truly prime wood among the common red oak. A tragedy in a way, because I was thinking of the gorgeous planks for cabinet work that were now reduced to cordwood length. At least now they’ll be used for a better purpose than use as fuel.

So, wooden spoons in stunning natural cherry color. A great Christmas present for a cook. don’t you agree?

Posted on

Tempering

Spoons boiling in a pot of water? Yes, this is tempering. The spoons and spatulas shown here are this year’s batch of Christmas and holiday presents for friends needing a new piece of treen – an old word for woodenware. The rough carving,  shaping, and sanding have been done; the bowls carved first of course. Now comes the tempering to raise the grain so a final sanding and rubbing can finish the treen. The last step will be rubbing with a paste made from beeswax and mineral oil. The wood is from the cherry that my firewood provider told me was in the seven chords I bought this year. He casually informed me that: “…there’s a bit of cherry in there”. A bit turned out to be about twenty percent of a chord. Of course I couldn’t burn it. So, I have cherry blanks for spoons, bowls, spatulas, wooden forks, and other assorted treen for a number of years. I may even have to sell some.