Trying The Spoonster Polissoir

I took a test drive with my recent practice piece when customizing the turner’s polissoir for a couple of spoonmakers to see how it worked.  I was going to carve a spoon bowl but time got away from me so I just used a hardware store wooden spoon to try it out.

I first immersed the crowned tip of the modified polissoir into a molten bath of 50/50 beeswax and shellac wax to harden it and align any wayward fibers. The waxed tip is really dramatic.

Then I burnished the bowl of the aspen (?) wood spoon (it was fine grained and essentially character-less).  The surface became soother’n cat spit even though I did no preparation to it, it came straight out of the package.  Clearly I could have used the polissoir on a much smaller, steeper spoon bowl (sorry about the blurry picture, auto-focus did a wonderful job of capturing the texture of my jeans).

I did it to another spoon after ebonizing it with India ink to emphasize the effect.  You can compare the polished half with the unpolished half and see the difference.

All finished it’s pretty good with about 15 seconds of burnishing.