Calm Carving | A Walnut Bowl With Decorative Bird Detail - For My Bird Friend

Video Description

Description Another lovely day spent making Here I create a small walnut bowl from some ‘Spalted’ walnut. Spalting is what is referred to as the patterns made by the fungal decay of wood. I encouraged this process by wrapping the log in some film towards the end of summer for a few months to ensure the log went a bit funky. Once the wood has been seasoned, it is completely safe. The pattern in the wood reminded me of a fox’s face. What shapes do you see in the spalting? I was inspired to make a bowl of this size because my mother in law uses a similar ceramic piece for the table to put nuts and sweets in for us and guests. The idea of the bird detail soon took over when I saw some little great tits squabbling over the walnuts that dropped from the tree that observes the workshop. I decided to make their quest for food and reserves for winter a little bit easier and was really drawn to documenting this experience with a small carved finial. Unlike my usual bowl carving process, it was refreshing to work more sculpturally with my detail knives to add a little bit of chip carving to the piece. Once it was finished, I placed the bowl back onto the block and filled it with walnuts and waited, camera rolling. To my surprise, the tit came back and spent a little longer to take a segment of walnut. It was really magical to see - I have been playing back the little clip at the end of this video a lot! Perhaps me and the little bird can be friends if I feed it enough walnuts from carved bowls. The bowl itself is quite playful. It doesn’t have a foot so it dances on a flat surface, much like a bird. It was caved to an even thickness of about 6 or 7mm and the rim dips and mimics the curvature of the initial log. It is a great feeling to document the manner of working with hand tools. It is the visceral experience of shaping wood using an axe, adze, hook knife and Slojd knife that drew me to the craft. The simplicity all fits into my backpack and is accessible to all. All of the tools are listed in the video. Please do reach out if you of you have any comments or questions. Much like an online woodworking busker, I have added a small ‘support’ page on my website if you wanted to help fund these videos and my carving journey whilst I am low on inventory for winter. Your generosity means a lot https://samuelalexandershapes.com Thank you for watching, Sam CHAPTERS: 00:00 Intro Scene 01:00 Initial Axe Work 02:05 Rough Hollowing With The Adze 03:46 Fine Hollowing With The Twca Cam 05:24 From Billet To Blank With Axe And Saw 09:00 Carving Knife Work 11:13 A Closer Look At The Spalting Patterns 11:17 Beginnings Of The Bird Finial 12:18 Carving The Bird Finial 14:05 Micro Carving Bird Details 15:49 Chamfering The Edges Satisfying ASMR 17:02 The Finished Piece 17:25 A Bird Eats From The Bowl! 17:45 Thank You And Support