Do you want to look behind the scene and see the process of tea wood making? Ondřej Sedlák puts his passion into it and he gave us this text and photos of one of his recent pieces. Enjoy!
Tea Wood Making
I was making this tea scoop from recently found bog oak and thought I could document the process a bit. I usually post only pictures of finished products so it might be interesting to sneak behind the scene.
Ondřej Sedlák
It could be obvious, but here is my recipe. After selecting the right piece of wood you cut or split the piece you are going to work with and you carve the rough shape using knives and chisels. After that comes the sanding with rough sanding paper and also you can use scraper to smooth carving cuts and tune up the final shape. If you’re happy with it clean the wood’s pores using steel brush and than comes another sanding using several grades of sanding paper to give the pieces pebble like feel, I end up with 500 grid. Then I wet and steam the wood to rise the grain and and after that comes fine sanding and polishing to about 2000 or higher grid. As a final touch I initiate the scoop with a tea brew so she knows that she is a TEA scoop and than just little bit of brushing to smoothen the surface. If the piece ask for that I sometimes use tea seeds oil or homemade shellac to enhance the grain but usually keep the pieces natural. This is how each of my creations is being born, it’s just a lot of patience and love! Now you know all the secrets. Thanks for reading and have a great day!
And here is the beautiful result of Ondřej´s work:
