I made a handle for a pizza cutter a a Christmas Present for my mom.
The wood is from a pear tree that was in my backyard when I moved to my house in 2010. I took the tree down and saved a Buch of wood. This piece looked like a handle so I made it into one. No lathe work, just rasping and whittling and sanding.
I also made a couple salad forks for my sister. She collects gingerbread man themed stuff, so I made the handles look like gingerbread men.
I made these out of some walnut I got from someone I know who builds and maintains church organs. It was a scrap from one of their projects. I made a template out of 1/4" plywood and after I cut the rough shape out with a jigsaw I used a router with a bearing bit to trim down to the template. There was a decent amount of whittling to finish it up and a lot of sanding to smooth it all down.
This fall I picked up some branch sections from my neighbor from a Smokebush in his yard. The wood grain is very pretty and a vibrant yellow.
I decided that I should try making a wooden spoon out of this wood and while it was a lot more work than the salad forks, I really enjoyed it and I am pretty happy with the result.
I rough-shaped another spoon but I have a lot of sanding to do to finish that off. Really enjoying the whittling and carving and I have enough wood to make probably a dozen more of these.
I'm also trying to get some other stuff made for my daughter's high school winter guard team. But I am almost done with that and maybe I can then shift gears to make more spoons and such. It takes a bit of a toll on my wrists and hands so I can't do it for hours on end, but possibly I will learn some things and it will get a little easier.
