The Cooper

In keeping with my interest in upcycling, one of the wedding gifts I made for Jay and Dom (my niece) was a wooden spoon, about 32cm long, carved from part of an oak stave from an old whisky barrel (bought at TreeFest at Westonbirt Arboretum). As is usual, the inside of the stave was heavily charred (for flavour) and the outside showed the barrel had been well-used. Given its provenance, I named the spoon 'The Cooper'. As the first full-sized spoon I had carved, it turned into quite a learning experience.

A third of the stave was cut and shaped, allowing the spoon to follow the curve of the stave. After rough shaping with a hand saw, the wood was shaped using two old carpentry tools: a curved chisel and an even older and primitive spokeshave. I had bought these tools for just a few pounds and had resharpened the cutting edges.

Working the wood produced an intense, almost cloyingly sweet aroma, probably indicating that the barrel had originally been used to mature sherry or bourbon before its use to age whisky (sadly, now that the spoon is sealed, the smell is no longer apparent but it's good to know it's still locked away inside). As is so often the case, the last 10% of the carving took 90% of the time as the curves of the spoon were refined. Often it felt more like a sculpture and even after I thought I had finished the spoon, periodic checks revealed irregularities in the curves and it went through a number of refinements before it felt right.

The surface of the spoon needed careful finishing to counter the effect of contact with water which will typically cause the fibres of the wood to rise. The spoon was smoothed with 6 grades of sandpaper and water-paper of decreasing grit and was washed between each sanding to raise the ever-decreasing fibres for the next smoothing.

[Apparently there is another way of dealing with this: carve the spoon leaving the chisel marks unsanded but this requires way more experience than I have.]

The wood was finished with walnut oil and as this dries it polymerises, hardens, waterproofs and does not go rancid. The only downside is that this may be an issue for people with nut allergies.

Given Dom is a graphic designer, I decided that the packaging was going to be an important part of the product and I went through a number of designs until coming up with triangular prism (think Toblerone box) made of black foam board and thin black card. Getting the sizing just right so that the spoon slid in lightly gripped by the sides of the box was a challenge and at times it seemed the box would take longer to make than the spoon. Creating a closure for the lid proved to be a problem and both magnets and internal rubber bands were rejected. The equilateral-triangular hinged lid was finally secured with a piece of black elastic hooking into a notch cut in the prism.

It's not clear from the photo, but the spoon does follow the curvature of the stave with the centre of the spoon being slightly lower than the ends. The top of the handle is flat but the underside is curved. This makes the end of the handle more comfortable in the palm of the hand and allows the thumb to rest along the flat section.

I've designed a custom branding iron that I will have 3-D printed in Holland in stainless steel and bronze. Meanwhile I am stuck with using individual metal stamps. The complication here is that, unhelpfully, the letters are not all centred and some, like the A, are ever so slightly rotated. To brand the letters successfully, I first gently tapped indentations in the wood, tapped harder when I could see it was correctly placed and aligned, heated the stamp, then locate the heated tip in the indentation.

March 2016