More Kuksa Cups!

 Over the past seven or eight months, I have made many kuksas. Some I have sold off or given away, and some I still have left. Add a comment below if you would be interested in buying one! This blog post will be more about pictures than  words because I have a lot to show so keep scrolling :).

Black birch a.k.a. cherry birch kuksa

Spalted birch kuksa. This cup is very special since I had specially prepared the birch log for spalting. Over a period of six months, I exposed both ends of the log to the elements and the summer sun. I also left the bark intact to help hold in moisture and speed up the spalting process. And so, this beautiful wood was produced without much effort!!

Sweet cherry kuksa

Sweet cherry kuksa beaver-tail style inspired by Jon Mac

These two twin cups are also made from the same log as the larger one from up there. This birch has a mix of gray spalting and dark brown streaks running across the wood.

Birch kuksa cup

 These next two kuksas are both beaver tail style cups. The bigger one was my largest cup ever with a capacity of 20 oz. Both cups are carved in sweet cherry.

They almost look like a father and son!

The details in this wood are just gorgeous!! And the chip carving around the border enhances the beauty even further.


These twin kuksas are both carved in sycamore.
The wood is very clean looking, almost modern like.



And to finish off my post on kuksas, here is another sweet cherry cup. I just love the way this wood shimmers under the light, very pretty! This one was a gift for my brother-in-law for helping me out and taking all these beautiful pictures. Shout out to Aleksandr Verbetsky!! :)

Spoons!

These serving spoons were carved in white birch then  put them away to dry. A few days later I took them out and finished then off with a tooled finish. The smaller one is an eating spoon in rock maple I had completed earlier.

Two servers and an eating spoon

Galician eating spoons

Cherry eating spoon close-up

Cherry server with a tooled finish

Cherry ladle with a tooled finish

Revamping this blog!!

     I've been putting this off for many, many weeks but here goes! Since my last blog post, I've carved many spoons, kuksas, and bowls; most of these were either sold or given away as gifts. I've noticed that my skills have improved greatly over this period of 7-8 months of silence. Throughout all of this, I've began developing my own kuksa style after having tried out different designs and various carving methods of different carvers. Stay tuned for pictures!! 

     

     The past couple of cold winter months slowed down my production quite a bit so I have been doing a lot of work in the shop with cutting spoon blanks and roughing out kuksas from last years left-over stock. But now with winter winding down to an end and warmer weather starting to emerge, I decided to sharpen up my tools and take a fresh start to carving :). I went out into the backyard woods and cut down a suitable maple tree that had been bent over quite badly from the heavy snows. Then I cut off a couple short chunks and got to work; it feels good to be carving some fresh wood again! Here are some pictures of the progress on the kuksa.

I decided on a beaver-tail style kuksa as I haven't carved one in a while. 

Here you can see the "scalloped" tail of the kuksa.

This is three hours of progress; the kuksa is all roughed out on the outside and now for the inside.
I had to move inside at this point since it was beginning to get dark out with the sun past the horizon.

New hook knife! UPDATE

I ordered a finishing hook knife from Nic Westermann the other week and the blade arrived today. 

                                          Here is the blade itself

 

 Here I chopped out the side profile of the handle I want to make

   Then I drilled the hole into the front with a 1/2 inch bit

   Then I drew out the top profile

                               The pencil line marks where the hole for the tang of the blade is

Then I chopped away the waste wood and cut the handle off. I carved a 3/16" chamfer on all edges except the front near the hole.

Then I carved a couple of pegs to hold the blade in place. I didn't have any epoxy on me so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to finish it up.

   Here is the knife next to a roughed out spoon that I carved last week

I'll have to fix the handle up a little bit later on a disc sander by tapering the handle towards the blade like it is towards the butt of the handle. The reason why I didn't taper it right away was because i didnt want to get carve too close to the hole. Then probably make the chamfers larger for a rounder handle, sand it up smooth, and put a coat of finish on it. (I'll upload a picture of the finished product later)

UPDATE

I finally bought some epoxy yesterday made by gorilla glue company. So this morning I got up and started working on it.

 I sanded the tang of the blade with some 100 grit to make a better bond and "epoxied" it in.

 I waited 2.5 hours for the epoxy to cure and trimmed the pegs flush and sliced excess epoxy off.

                                             Here is the knife before shaping the handle.

                              Here is the knife after shaping the handle and rounding over corners.

 The knife all ready to go but I wanted to sand it up to make it smooth. I went from 100-220 grit smoothing the handle out and after 2 light coats of the finish I use on my carvings I got to this...

                    I love the way it came out, the cherry is beautiful!!

I'll wait until 24 hours pass until I begin using it just to make sure the bond is good and solid.

SPOONS!!

Comment or email me if you are interested in buying, Thanks!

                  Sweet cherry coffee scoops or chinese soup spoons 6" x 2.5" - $30 each (2 available)

                             Red maple wood serving spoon with tooled finish in bowl 10" x 2" - $35

                                 White birch cooking spoon (one of my first ever) 9.5" x 1.75" - $35

                                                Sweet cherry serving spoon 9.5" x 1.75" - $30

                                        Sweet chestnut serving spoon/spatula 10.25" x 2" - $30

                                    Mixed cherry (black and sweet) eating spoons7" x 1.75" - $30 each

                                     Extra large serving spoon from willow wood 12" x 3" - $30

                                    My FAVORITE rock maple eating spoon 8.5" x 1.5" - $35

                                       This is a ladle made from black birch 9.5" x 1.75" - $40

                                              Black cherry eating spoon - 8.25" x 1.5" - $25

                                               And lastly a sweet cherry ladle 9.5" x 2" - $40