How To Burnish Wooden Spoons - Deborah Schneebeli Morrell

greetings my friends how are you doing this is zed from zed outdoors and i hope you're having an awesome day so today i am back to see a friend of mine deborah schneidley morel here in london specifically north west london now what we're going to be touching upon in this video is some techniques deborah uses for burnishing wooden spoons now this tutorial is a follow-on from a video we have just finished filming which is deborah's process for how to carve a pocket spoon if you haven't seen that tutorial already it's a very in-depth tutorial showing you from start to finish how she carves a small wooden spoon now what i'm going to do i'm going to put a link to that below in the description should you want to check that out now what we're going to talk about in this video is a spin off from one of the processes in that which is burnishing which is basically getting a smoother finish now if you're not familiar with what the process entails and the effect you get you're going to see that shortly so deborah with your permission shall we get started let's get started awesome stuff so guys i hope you enjoyed the rest of this tutorial so deborah for those that may not be familiar with burnishing what is burnishing and why would you want to do it burnishing is really pushing the fibres of the wood down so that the wood becomes smoother and um you know spoon carvers don't use sandpaper actually sandpaper just raises the fibers i think and certainly if the spoon got wet it wouldn't be too good so um not everybody does it i quite like the kind of pattern that it gives a spoon so when you burnish and then you add oil on top it gives it a sort of added patterner and it's sort of miraculous in a way you think you've only used a knife and a pebble on this spoon and look how incredibly smooth and comfortable it is in the mouth i mean i think that's the other thing it's quite comfortable to have a burnished spoon in your mouth because it is really smooth and so with the burnishing um in what at what process of the spoon carving process itself would you now decide to burnish well it's right at the end it's after you've done your finishing cuts and the spoon should be fairly dry i mean i i'm wondering whether it's good idea to do it when it's completely bone dry it's a little bit on some woods that dry really really hard it's hard to burnish because you can't sort of move the fibres at all so this is a bit of a critical point at which stage you do it really so i usually do it a day or so after i've well sometimes i don't actually sometimes i leave them but um you know if i was a bit more organized and i would probably do it a day or two after i'd finished the spoon so to actually burnish a spoon what do you need well you can use all sorts of things i mean some people use deer antlers i'd quite like to get my hands on some deer antlers i have asked around and uh or a porcelain burnisher those are quite popular um but i just picked up a pebble or a couple of pebbles um that have been turned in the sea so they're smooth so this the pebbles i use come from albra beach and i think one comes from a river in switzerland so they've got to be very smooth and they're quite small and it's going to be difficult to see them in my hand you know with a spoon there but we'll do our best excellent so what have we got here then well these are my little assortment of pebbles i think that's the swiss one um funnily enough this funny shaped one is my favorite because it's got this little dent in it here and when you're when you're actually doing the side of a spoon like here it just the sp the side of the spoon just fits in that dent and um if you rub it you can just rub the edge down it's almost like you know you chamfer it with a knife well you can actually chamfer it with a pebble you don't want to dull the the edges of the spoon too much it's a little bit critical how much you press so um this one i would certainly if i'll show you this is um a spoon i made yesterday so you just i i press all the edges like that um and are you doing short quick movements yeah quite quick um so i would you know you can see how that fits into the pebble there so i can go around like this um and then i can use that nice flat bit there and i just do the i just rub it like that you do put a bit of pressure on and you'll see how the can you see how the light shows the that's not burnished and that's burnished and actually the feel of it is incredible it's like silk or something um and actually in the right light you can see the bits that you know those pebble has missed so you can go back and do it so it's incredibly simple really and you would work your way around the entire spoon yeah so i mean these bits here just press those down like that and then these little pinches here you can pull that in or actually i could use this one which is a more like a quartzy pebble um you see it's almost the same shape look at that it's brilliant fit and that just you get a shine really it's not just the flatness or the silkiness of it you get a lovely shine on it which is um and then you might use um a bigger pebble like this one for the bowl so because you know you want to go around here like this i go around the inside rim first it also helps to make that rim very even see what i mean about not seeing the pebble but um you can actually see now this is a hard wood because it's peach and so when it's a hardwood you do have to press a bit harder so it's beginning to you can you i mean particularly see it here the lovely shine on it i mean for instance this one is um a plum spoon which has been burnished and oiled but this is some time ago so that's the kind of finish i'm aiming for and it's a kind of it almost looks like it's been touched so much it's got that patterner this one here i've just started doing this is damson and it hasn't been oiled so it'll the color will really kind of pop out when it's um so you can see sometimes you you get a little blemish in a spoon that you can't deal with with a knife you know for some reason or other something to do with the grain and you can push in those little blemishes and it's really good to sharp corners are not nice sharp edges so it's quite nice to do this with my special pebble i don't know if i'd do when i lost that one so um so those are hardwoods those are both fruit woods this one is beach which is lovely to burnish i mean that's um done a little while ago and um beach is some it's just a fabulous wood and it's it's nice to burnish this one here is hawthorne where a knot popped out and it turned into a pinhole camera but i quite like that it's um that will take the pebble really really nicely and it almost turns into ivory and it's just that you can show off another quali another quality in the woods you know it's a bit like an old sculpture in a church or something you know that's been touched by hands for hundreds of years and i don't know if you can does that pick up in the camera the light shining on it it's just beautiful i mean you wouldn't you wouldn't be i don't know if you could identify the wood when it gets to this stage hawthorne is is another wood that that is beautiful to burnish and that you know that way we go around the edges with my special actually have never burnished a bubble on the end a finial like that before but it would be the same process it would just be you could something like that you could use the back of a teaspoon i mean it's anything that's smooth really if you want to get into those gaps i probably would use the back of a teaspoon so there's nothing to it actually said it's just it's just um patience i've got a cut on this finger in a horrible place it's actually nothing to do with carving and it's quite uncomfortable to do it but um so as a recap once you've finished carving your spoon and you've done the finishing cuts you let it dry i let it dry yeah and then you get something with a spoon service be a pepper or piece of antler etc yeah and then basically work across the entire spoon just like you've shown it here and yeah you feel it's all smoothed down yeah i mean you can you can see it's slightly rough well it's not hardly rough but from the knife and then i don't want to disguise the fact that it's been cut by a carved by a knife i mean i think that would be a shame and i have seen things which are over burnished where you lose everything gets rounded i don't really want to do that um it's quite hard work you have to press hard but it's not um as i said before it's not a tool that's easy to see um it would be quite good if i had um i could maybe arrow dot it onto a handle i might design i might design a burnishing um tool with a pebble with a handle but it does make a difference it just makes it classy you know i wish you could actually feel it through the camera but you can't but that is just fantastic and you know down the edges it's a nice thing to do and some of these very subtle curves it's nice to it's nice to go in there and um accentuate them a little bit it's quite laborious and it it takes a long time you need to have a good bit of light so you can see the bits that have been missed you can feel it as well because um your hand will just you can just feel that silkiness it's just fantastic actually but it does add time to making a spoon you know you quite a bit of time to burnish your spoon properly i'm holding it in a funny way because of this cut on my thumb which is uncomfortable yeah this spoon was carved a few weeks ago so it's pretty hard and it's pretty hard burnishing it as well so all in all that is a guide to burnishing the spoon yeah a simple a very simple so there you have it my friends that is a wrap for this tutorial deborah thank you so much again um so as i mentioned at the beginning of this video this is a follow-on tutorial from a video i filmed just earlier today with deborah where she showed from start to finish how to carve a pocket spoon so i'll put a link below today if you haven't seen that already also i've mentioned that about a year ago from today we formed a tutorial with deborah on how to carve a standard eating spoon so once again a link to that also put down below a couple of other links i'll be putting down below are a to deborah's instagram where you can follow her work see what she gets up to on a day-to-day basis it's also a great way of keeping in touch with her and the other link i will put there is to her etsy store where she puts the spa spoons up available that are for sale they typically don't hang around long uh she carves some really beautiful work they're very in demand but however we'll put a link to that obviously it's something that you should be checking back to time and time again but she's always adding some beautiful spoons she's called a prolific carver a spoon a day a spoon a day and she's got this mountain of spoons that's a hike i've had to get my mountain gear hike over a space i don't know what to do with them all really because some of them i won't put on etsy i have thought about just putting them around the neighborhood on garden walls you know just people can have them because you know i'm not 100 if i'm not 100 pleased with a spoon i don't really want to put it up excellent no no no that sounds like a great idea i know a few guys actually do that a few spoon cars yeah i think they do yeah yeah a friend of mine out in the u.s especially say he lives near the appalachian trail and he's always leading us i've seen yeah dotted i don't like the idea of burning them and you know people do that i really like that yeah so guys i hope you enjoyed this tutorial deborah i really do appreciate your time once again that's funny links to everything that i mentioned down below if you have any questions or queries do let me know also and on that note i hope whatever you're doing you have a blessed day a blessed week ahead from deborah and myself said outdoors peace out peace out

Channel: Zed Outdoors

Views: 29,316

Keywords: spoon carving, wood carving, wooden spoon, spoon carving asmr, how to carve a spoon, wood carving satisfying, spoon carving for beginners, how to carve a wooden spoon

Id: 1MsUpe2b_7o

Length: 16min 34sec (994 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021