While picking up wood for another project I have going, I snagged this scrap piece of cherry wood. I saw potential with it for some things I wanted to try. Since last year, I wanted to carve a small tray. Would it be for tea? For food? I didn’t take all that into consideration. All I was looking for was a reason to carve. I knew the idea would form around that. From the start, I knew I wanted the top to have a tooled look. This means leaving the mark from my gouge behind. This does two things: shows the thing is carved by hand and serves as a beautiful decorative element. Sometimes, the tooled surface can be great for keeping things from rolling off. I suppose there is a practical factor to it. My original idea was to have the tray made from this solid piece of wood. I ended up carving a shallow mortise in the bottom of the tray joint with another piece of cherry to serve as a stand. This gives the tray a floating effect.
I didn’t get to touch this tray for about a month because I was caught up in client work and personal things. Those didn’t stop me from thinking about finishing this tray. I have been making an effort to see all my projects through. Even the ones that don’t come out all that great. During the month hiatus from the tray, I thought about which experiment I wanted to conduct on it. While cherry carries a beautiful color, I wanted to alter the color. Sure, you can use natural stains but what if we took it a step further? My first consideration was to fumigate the wood with ammonia. There is a great article here that goes into the science behind it. In layman’s terms, the way ammonia reacts with wood would achieve a unique finish. The second consideration (which is what I ended up doing) was to oxidize the wood. I attempted this by boiling the tray in an aluminum foil tray with iron, water, and vinegar. I had seen another creator I follow, Peter Spaulding, do this with a tray of his. When it came down to it, I chose the second method over the first. I didn’t have anything I could fumigate the wood in. I’ll try it in the future.
I ignited my grill, got it up to temperature, and put my foil tray on the grill. I let it sit for an hour. Moving the iron and wood chips to aid in the oxidizing. My biggest struggle at this stage was keeping my fire going. I didn't get enough charcoal wood ready for this task. This ended up being where things went south. After pulling the tray off the fire, I pulled it out and saw it had darkened. It didn’t get the rich, black color I was looking for. It did get some cool black spotting all around that reminded me of spalted wood. While carving the top of the tray, a crack did start to form. Since the wood was immersed in water and cooled after boiling, it seems to have enhanced the fracture. I want to seal this gap. If I can get my hands on a kintsugi kit, I would love to add that to this tray.
I’m not in love with how this tray turned out. I am happy that I saw it through and took these risks to make that happen. I am trying to execute more risk in my process. You can learn a lot about what you do and don’t like through these experiments. What is the takeaway from this post? Stop letting your fear of failure dictate whether you do something or not. Make the jump.
