Hello everyone!
It’s been a while, but we finally held another spoon-making workshop.
We were planning to carve wood out in a lovely field on a hill with a sea view – sounded perfect, right? But the weather turned completely on us. After days of sunshine, we got hit with heavy sideways rain that felt like a typhoon! So, we quickly changed plans and held the workshop in the kitchen of a lovely guesthouse in Kuroshio Town called Kurashi House. Big thanks to them for letting us use the space.
This time we had three types of wood: mulberry, persimmon, and bayberry. The mulberry and persimmon were easy enough to split, but the bayberry was rock solid and just wouldn’t budge. Since everyone was a beginner, we figured the bayberry would be too much of a challenge, so we left it out. Each pair ended up working with either mulberry or persimmon.
Persimmon’s a bit hard but really nice and easy to carve – great for beginners.
Mulberry’s a bit coarser and looks a bit like beadtree, but it’s got this beautiful white colour. It splits well along the grain, but even in smooth areas, the grain can be tricky and go the opposite way. Cutting across the grain is also tough, so if your hook knife or chisel isn’t super sharp, shaping the spoon bowl can get a bit tricky.
We kicked things off at 1pm, and everyone wrapped up around 6:30pm. A long day – amazing effort from everyone!
All four of them gave it everything with their axes and knives, so by the end their right hands were bright red and too sore to grip properly.
Pretty sure they all woke up with aching arms the next day!
But it was totally worth it – they each made a unique and lovely spoon. Such great results!
We’ve still got some wood left, so we’re planning another workshop in June.
If you’re interested, just drop us a message.
See you next time!
We’re also taking spoon orders if you’d like one made for you.