Wooden Spoon Carving Andrea Cortés Barcelona Wood Workshops Online Course

To shape the inside of the spoon’s bowl, you can use a hook knife or the gouge. For my first spoons, I hollowed the bowl with a gouge (mine has a No. 8 sweep in the Swiss-made numbering system). Just as with the straight knife, you want to use your body and hands in such a way that you can cut efficiently, without having the tool’s edge land in your flesh.

Once I source a piece of wood, I wrap it in a tough reusable plastic bag, to help it from drying out too quickly. On longer trips, you may want to add a knife sharpening stone too, as a sharp knife is a safer knife. Later, oil https://bestwoodcarvingtool.com/how-to-carve-wooden-spoon/ it whenever the opportunity arises, or when you remember. This will help your spoon last a long and useful life. Spoon maintenance is all part of the process and I’ve come to greatly enjoy oiling my small collection of spoons.

Watch: A Spoon Carver’s Guide To Wood Types

Another useful grasp is the one Wille calls the “chest lever grip.” I’m right-handed, so I hold the knife in my right hand, blade pointed out. The spoon in my left hand mirrors the position of the knife. To start the cut, the knuckles on each hand are against my chest and my forefingers bump up against each other. The knife slices as I pull my hands apart, with the action coming from my upper chest and back. The cut ends with my elbows sticking straight out and the knife and spoon have both moved out and away from each other. To begin, you’ll need to find a suitable piece of wood!

To keep your hands out of harm’s way, work at the proper height with the cut angled away from your body and into the chopping block. This was such a fun experiment, I love how there are so many different ways to get the same results. I wiped off all the excess oil and https://bestwoodcarvingtool.com/ then finished them off with Walrus Oil Wood Wax for some extra protection. Literally took me minutes to make and it left such a great finish on the insides of the bowls. For the next experiment I tried to carve out the bowl using a flap disc on my angle grinder.

Split And Prepare The Wood For Carving

At this point, it is possible to make the handle too thin and delicate, but beginning spoon carvers are more likely to err on the fat side. Shape the handle so that it’s comfortable in your hand — the layout lines are a visual guide, but trust your hands, too. As the handle thins down, you will feel it flexing beneath your tools, and you may feel you are going to break it. If the spoon survives the process of its own making, it will survive for many years in the kitchen. A few years ago I was camping with some friends, and as soon as we got there, one of the guys started carving a spoon. I soon learned that he does this every time he goes camping, and I thought it was a pretty cool way to spend time at the campsite.

• One of my most-used cuts draws the knife toward my chest, with the spoon held against my sternum.
• By registering for the spoon carving workshop I acknowledge and fully understand that I will be engaging in physical activities that may involve some risk of injury.
• It’s time to get chopping, so put your glove and safety glasses on.
• But it can be a lot of fun making spatulas, butter knives, ladles, and even diminutive salt spoons.

The name relates either to it’s tendency to lose branches in high winds or as a counter to Sugar maple Acer saccharum, which is also known as Hard maple . I love the smell of my workshop when I’ve been chomping through a bunch of maple. It might be my weakness for maple syrup, but the sweet, fresh scent of recently cut maple is my happy place. Come into my workshop unannounced and you might just catch me huffing the recently cut surface of maple like some sort of coke addict. You can narrow down your selection with the following sweeping statements. Don’t use softwoods (e.g. pines and spruces), don’t use ring porous species (e.g. oaks and ashes).

Spoon Making: A Basic Kit

Learning how to carve a spoon the fastest and easiest way will require green wood or something very soft, like basswood. If you’re harvesting green wood, make sure you’re familiar with the regulations in your area. Some national forests make wooden spoon require a permit to cut live trees down. The easiest way to do this would be to ask a friend who has land that wouldn’t mind you cutting down a small tree. If you want to go with basswood you can pick it up at any hobby shop.