55 on the fly

I met Arturo or "Woods Roamer", a fellow wood carver and bowyer (builder of bows - as in bow & arrow), on line.  I'm a follower of his wonderful blog "Woods Roamer - Contemplations on Nature and the Art of Self-Sufficiency".  You can find it here: http://woodsroamer.blogspot.com/ I mentioned to him that I was looking for a left handed hook knife for spoon carving and Arturo was kind enough to offer up a lefty hook knife blade that he had forged and had tucked away in storage.  I was very glad to have it and offered him some wild turkey feathers for his arrow fletchings in exchange.  Well, I just got this fine blade in the mail the other day and it's just the right size and has a nice clean inside bevel, just what I was looking for.  Arturo also sent along some mounting instructions for installing the blade which worked out perfectly as you can see.   Shaped for my hand and finished with Briwax. Here's the blade with the new pear wood hand...

Folks, here is my finished pear wood "lefty spoon"... I am very happy with the way it tured out. The spoon has nice color and the pear wood is much stronger than I thought it would be. When I finished carving I treated it with two coats of raw tung oil. It was a fun and challenging spoon to carve. Carving such a curved piece required paying close attention to the grain of the wood. This is my third spoon.

One more spoon... I'll get back to fishing stuff next time, really...

No --- not a fishing spoon..... a wooden eating spoon....  At times I break out the woodcarving tools and do a little carving.  I was inspired by a fellow bushcrafter and spoon carver, Mike Barton on YouTube and decided to give it a try... In about an hour --- starting with a small log; I split out a blank and carved this spoon.  This will go in my pack for those cold days afield when I want to have a coffee or a quick meal. completed my first spoon