I did not do an actual woodworking demo at Big Island, but there were some very satisfying moments. Several came from watching Tony, our enthusiastic new member from Des Moines, split wood. Much of the time, rather than swing the axe directly, he used my froe club to drive it in. He was very pleased with it–he shares my interest in traditional woodworking.

I made the froe club a few years ago. It came from an ash tree in our yard. After the weekend in Albert Lea it is somewhat the worse for wear, but that is its destiny. It is an expendable tool and easily replaced. I just have to watch for a freshly downed tree in our our neighborhood.

I did get out my portable shaving horse on Saturday, taking a piece of a small branch to see if I could make a usable spoon. I started by roughly shaping it with a couple modern drawknives, one from Sweden, the other from Switzerland. I had sharpened both recently. So the “operator” effects in both preparation and use were equal and so I had a fair competition between the tools. I found the Swedish version to be much more effective.

I dished out the interior of the bowl with a hook knife and a couple small gouges. Then I refined the outside with a spokeshave. I had used this particular tool before and not been particularly impressed. However, this time I had flattened the back of the blade as well as carefully sharpening the bevel. With this care the spokeshave worked just fine.

(No–I am not getting paid by Lee Valley. I am just a satisfied customer.)

Sunday I was able to do a little more work on the spoon. No special tools this time–just my general purpose belt knife, which has served me well for years. I think I got it from Jas. Townsend, but I don’t see anything like on their current web site. Again, Swedish steel did very well. In addition to further shaping, I discovered I could use the blade as a scraper, which went a long way towards smoothing the surface.