Working with walnut

Walnut is one of the first woods I started working with when I was teaching myself to carve and it’s been a favourite ever since.

Before oiling walnut the patterns within the grain are visible, but the overall colour is much more subtle and lacking in the depth that it gets when oiled. So when pieces are finished it’s my favourite wood to give that first coat of oil. The way this brings out these dark, rich tones that highlight the patterning within the wood… it’s just beautiful.

I’ve worked with a lot of ash over recent years, and what I love about ash is that it barely changes colour when oiled. I’m not a big fan of woods which turn orangey when you finish them so I’m always delighted when ash remains this lovely soft, pale colour. The oil only enhancing the grain.

But, since noticing that all the walnut pieces on my site were selling out, I realised that people at the moment do love this darker, richer colour wood. So I’ve been focusing my recent attention on making more of these pieces with the wood I’ve got.

Below are a recently finished coffee scoop and slim pudding spoon. The coffee scoop was meant to have an identical twin, but unfortunately after spending a day working on it, I realised that it had a knot which had caused a small crack that ran all the way through the thinnest part of the spoon handle. This hadn’t been visible when I’d started on the spoon, but as I’d carved my way through layers of wood it became more apparent. Frustrating yes, and I couldn’t find a way to alter the shape to make it still work but when working with these beautiful naturals materials, you have to accept it sometimes when nature wins!