Spoon 37 of 52 – The Baby Spoon in Ash

This is my first time using ash, a native tree to Britain with an estimated 5% of woodland currently being ash. The wood is tough and is a natural shock absorber, because of this it is commonly used for tool and sport handles including: axes, hammers, hockey sticks and oars. It is also easily bent and used in the furniture industry and can be made into skis.

The wood worked completely differently to anything I have used so far. When cutting with the axe the head would get stuck with each strike and I would have to wobble it out to continue. Although hard, it wasn’t too bad to work with the knife once I got used to it. Shaping it with the axe though felt very odd.

There were some nice swirls on the split and I wanted to keep them in the spoon head. I tried to follow the natural curve of the grain with this one, and like most spoons I have made in a similar approach, I am not completely happy with the final design. I don’t feel it is quite right. But, overall, it sanded and polished up well and it might actually be functional unlike most of my spoons!