Kuksa's are traditionally made from Birch wood so that is what i will be using.
Take a log of fresh birch wood and chop it down the centre with an axe.
Take one half and carve the chopped surface smooth and flat with your knife.
Draw around a cup or round object onto the flat surface of the log. Use this line as a guide when you are carving.
Carve around one side of the circle like so:
now carve the underneath to make nalf your cup shape. You will be needing an axe for these jobs because there is quite a lit of wood to remove.
Now draw out your handle shape. To easily remove most of the wood from either side of the handle i made some stop cuts.
Simply chop off the wood
Carve some more wood off with your knife from either side of the handle if you need to. Leave some excess wood on though.
start to carve out the other side of the main cup section. If the knife slips and goes onto the handle area it will only damage the excess wood which yo should remove later.
Now you can draw on your handle shape
I used a bracer to creathe the whole and just my knife to do the rest.
once the main shape of the cup is carved and you are happy with it, move on to carving out the bowl.
Once you have carved your cup to perfection and its symetrical on both sides, put it in aa open paper bag for a week to let the wood dry.
Once dry it will be time to sand your cup smooth. Start off with the most coarse sand paper you have and then use less abrasive papers to finish. I generally use three different grits of paper. Get all the bumps and scratches out with the roughest untill you move onto the finer stuff.
To easily sand out the inside of the handle whole i uses a peice of sand paper wrapped round a stick.
You can also drill or burn an extra whole for hanging your cup
Once sanded and totally finished i oiled it with vegetable oil.
Finished!
Article by Jonathan Ridgeon
Looking forward to it !
