Woodcraft - Handcarving a Kuksa

Description

Whilst camping with my daughter and friend Gary, he surprises me by cutting a piece of Black Birch for carving; I craft it into a Kuksa, a traditional wooden mug used throughout the world by the woodland peoples.

Join us in the forest!

Tags: woodcraft,bushcraft,carving,wood,birch,kuksa,spoon,sloyd,handmade,handcarved,ray,mears,rewild,natural,traditional,wooden,mug,cup,noggin,bowl,handcrafted,nativesurvival

Video Transcription

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I've only switch position I'm glad you saw knocking I'll take it further up from the carry the whole thing back to camp

and then he just keeps it up a little bit

yeah you're the wall huh want me [Music]

see Sophie well it holds up it looks like it's got some kind of cutting it close with this something's got some that's my face well actually I think the balls will be on this side though so the handle will be over here so I guess I can get away with that

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[Applause]

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took that not out by cross-cutting behind it and then splitting along it on the other side of my ax powered it through with the mallet that's right not nope that was actually this one the other one is right here it's that big not

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you're on the way the camera though so I prefer if you were say over here see how I made it nice and round so I can start shaping the world with all these knots and stuff it's gonna have a round bottom right thanks tickets ready to drink oh thanks oh he's more work huh yeah maybe doing starting lines like that helps me see what the pieces

it's supposed to be this is underneath the handle see this is gonna be the side I was kind of taper in the side because I do like a fishtail on the way in [Music]

mmm-hmm any [Music]

yes my sweetheart yeah hi any girl [Music]

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that's my one-year-old upstairs my wife hanging out in my office downstairs in my house sometimes I carve down here [Music]

all right box the lawn default on this side this perches pretty spalted little rotten little gnarly trying to make something out of it there's a gift from a good friend of mine Gary he's a big supporter i'm nita survival as well [Music]

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with a surprisingly hard in the middle sing it's just a carving machine along with the right heat-treat holds the best edge in my opinion and has the best edge the grain is so fine it's just it's just surgical it's deadly establishing a line then the Scandinavian grip take an opposite chess leaver with the carbon curves which I am doing right now you can see how there's a slight curve here I've already done this one so I'm gonna just rock that real quick should I do it right here there's the new life music

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that's working on the handle right now I'm gonna clean this up hold this underneath I said what glue on the real bad cracks for now so working hard to try to make it work nice and deep we don't real deep really nice way down there

gnarly spalted birch I mean it's got some really cool granny can't wait to throw some oil on this thing purples tans White's there's all sorts of stuff came out of this I stuffed a flat in the bottom still quite a bit of work left overall but it's getting there so I'm just using straight up knife for most of us axe to rough it knife to do everything else and spoon now if I had gouges and if I had a a carving bench to pin this I'd be a whole lot less work but if I want to make these like production make a lot of them really fast like one a day I'd do that thinking about doing it anyways just to make life easier but there's something about just like holding the piece the whole time it takes longer it's a lot of work but this is a cut never seen anyone talk it's a chess leader and reinforced thumb at the same time instead of pushing like this and you kind of you know you scrunch up your shoulders when I do it if I go to chest and I can use the power the chest leaver but my son gives it very fine control all right the transition is done yes she is

okay I just made a rough pencil legislate I was like yeah something like that

now try to make this flat let's get my Mac supposed to sleep okay crosscut works incredibly well there's stuff like this

that's pretty good certainly likes to sit even if it gets wants to go back to that point that's good bit nice maybe mop all that done from the bottom please okay the bottoms done it's me sitting in the woods anyways and as you use a metal morgue at home maybe I'll change to this better work on the back of this handle Donna still has that salt cut [Applause]

right on oh sweet cool because of all the cracks I made it extra robust extra big like wold

extra thick walled but it still gets skinny at the top so good skin looks just where what's kind of rotten and crumbly but I can't put two sharper lines on it I'm happy with so far I'd rather have a gnarly looking cooks not a perfect factory looking one because the the gnarly the nollie ones are the character ones feel like they're like rescued coaxes yeah there can you rescue down got character it's got issues you make do with what its kind of thing that's what these are like tree been down a while half rotten I'll spot it up and insect holes and splitting cracks a whole bit totally worth it though then you got to do extra tricks you have to do extra things you know a little bit while you work on it and dry a really good certain way to make sure it doesn't there depending each piece is a little different still have to be in paper bags and plastic some was shaving some about some of my dehumidifier drone some upstairs and like humidifier wrong like in like the house summer house you know yeah it's a challenge I get to work extra hard on these which I like I like the challenge I know guys I use walnut oil I like sunflower oil cuz it gives a great Sheen it's food grade used it for a long time and it doesn't down get gummy my dries like one seat and it doesn't get hard either it wasn't great like a plastic like that it's just really gentle on the wood I used my stuff so it doesn't go or answer anything I never had it happen well I'll get that good

I planted some coal rosing as well to us really enjoy doing that oh it's starting to come alive I love this moment menacing ass absolutely sweet green it's got a bunch of chocolate note some purple notes awesome [Music]

you