This kitchen workhorse presents a surprising and rewarding challenge.
Awooden spoon you can get one for a dollar in many places. Its just a stick with a hollow shaped at one end. It’s a simple stick with a hollow at one end. Why bother? Use them to stir sauces, dole out rice and beans, then forget about them. But like much in woodworking, the hand-carved spoon is in another sphere than its mass-produced substitute.
Over 30 years of woodworking experience has allowed me to create furniture for many households. My most challenging court cupboard, or my most intricately carved chest, is still the spoon. This is a woodworking aspect that emphasizes tradition, design, form, and function. Spoon carving teaches you about edge tools, greenwood, and body mechanics while also allowing you to sample local woods that may not otherwise make it to your workbench.
The spoon carving I learned from Jgge Sundqvist, his father, Wille Sundqvist, and Drew Langsner is part of a Swedish tradition, the revival of which was really spearheaded by Wille. My first attempts were difficult and thick. The best thing about spoons? You can do it again in a matter of hours. Another nice thing is that you can do most of it other than the hatchet work anywhere; you dont really need a dedicated shop space.
Spoon carving is best done in green woodworking. You can experiment with a great range of local woods, usually free. Ive used apple, pear, cherry, rhododendron, birch, lilac, olive, mulberry, beech, maple and others. The best fruitwoods are apple and mulberry, which is why I love them.
Toolkit. To make your own spoons, you only need a few tools. I use a hatchet with two or three knives and sometimes a hatchet.
My toolkit is very small. I use a hatchet, a few knives and a lot of other tools. Add some splitting tools and a rough saw for crosscutting the blank. The hatchet has a smaller, double-bevel design than the larger single-bevel one I use for joinery. The purpose of the double-bevel tool is to allow you to cut shapes, not flat surfaces.
The bulk of the shaping is done with a long-bladed carving knife, often marketed under the description sloyd knife, which refers to the Swedish term relating to handicrafts.To hollow the spoons bowl, I use hook knives specifically made for carving spoons, but you can hollow your spoon with a carving gouge.
Crooked blank. From a crook comes a thin but strong spoon.
Some spoons are made from crooks, sections of bent limb-wood, or places where a limb meets the trunk or a larger limb. These are some of the most challenging spoons, but can be the most successful. In them, the spoons bowl flows below the stem and handle while following the trees fibers, resulting in thin, but strong spoons. To create a graceful spoon, you must compromise some straight-grained blanks. At some point, youre cutting across the wood fibers. It can be done in any direction.
Let’s start with a spoon made from a straight blank. Start with a clear piece of fresh wood, the diameter a little greater than the intended spoons width. Use a hatchet or froe to cut the length of the piece. (Strike the froe with a wooden club, never metal.) Hew away the inner flat face, removing the trees pith (the central section); leaving this bit in results in radial cracks or splits, ruining the spoon. Next, I removed the bark side to see where I’m going.
Pencil it in. Draw the outline of your spoon on top of the blank. Make relief cuts to the area where the handle meets the bowl with a hatchet or saw.
The pencil is my biggest departure from joinery work. I only use it on spoons and never on furniture. The top view is drawn on the bark side. I then cut relief where the handle meets with the spoon bowl. These can be sawn or cut with my hatchet. I can now cut the handles without worrying about hitting the bowl’s end grain and split it.
Safety stance. To keep your hands out of harms way, work at the proper height with the cut angled away from your body and into the chopping block.
Grip and posture are crucial when using the hatchet. I set the spoon on a clean stump (sometimes called a chopping block) thats between knee and waist high. Place the spoon on the stump’s far side and begin to chopping around the spoon’s handle. Light relief cuts are made, breaking down the fibers to your outline. Work your way up the spoons handle, but stop a good ways from your off-hand thats gripping the wood. Im right-handed and keep my feet spread apart with my right leg dropped down behind me. That way an errant blow from the hatchet doesnt glance off the stump into my leg. Having the proper stance also brings you better balance and more power in your hatchet strokes.
Built-in stop. A notch in your block gives you more control over detail chopping work.
To shape the outside of the bowl, its best to support the spoon on the edge of the chopping block. Jgge showed me how he creates a notch in the edge of the block to nest the spoon into while hewing this shape. The notch allows you to hew accurately, and it makes a stop for the hatchet. The tools edge bottoms out on the block before cutting too far on the spoon.
First grasp. Wrist and elbow are locked for the powerful first strokes with the knife. The motion is initiated from the shoulder. Notice how the work points away from all parts of the body.
Knife work is where all the refinement of shapes comes into play. There are numerous grasps, as Wille and Jgge termed them, that allow great power in the knife work. These grips are practiced to ensure that the knife cuts the wood with great accuracy and power. The grips, positions, and movements also have a stop so the knife can only cut what you need.
Handle First
To make long, generous shavings from the spoon, the first stroke of the knife for the handle should be a strong one. Keep your elbow straight and your wrist straight while you hold the knife. Your shoulder and upper body control the movement. Raise your shoulder up as high as it goes, and with the knife engaging the wood at the butt, make a downward thrust while slicing toward the knifes tip. The knife’s stroke is not stoppable. Position yourself so that the knife travels between your legs or beside you. You must ensure that nothing is in the knife’s path.
The chest lever grip. This shows another way to make the first cuts; again, the action comes from the chest and back, not the arms.
Wille also refers to the chest lever grip as a useful grasp. Since I am right-handed, I hold the knife in my righthand, with the blade pointed out. The spoon in my left hand mirrors the position of the knife. The knuckles of each hand should be against my chest, and my forefingers should bump up against one another to begin the cut. As I pull my hands apart, the knife cuts. The action comes from my upper chest as well as my back. My elbows are exposed and the knife has moved away from me.
Both of the above cuts end in space; there is no stop for the knife. Other cuts have a built-in stop to keep things safe. I use this knife to draw the knife towards my chest. The spoon is held against my sternum. The movement is very quick. I start the cut with my forearms close to my body. The knife cuts from butt to tip as I draw it toward me. When my right hand touches my chest, it stops. As before, its a slicing motion.
Sometimes my off-hand applies pressure on the knifes spine, helping to guide and drive the tools edge in cutting. In one version of this grasp, I press the spoon against my chest with my left thumb and forefinger, while the other fingers push against my right hand to help slide the knife along its travel. Brace both forearms against my body. This cut isn’t very long, but it’s great for creating the handles and bowl shapes.
Thumb guide. This cut slices at an angle across the work, stopping when the hilt hits the work.
Another grip that I often use is to point the knife away from me. My left thumb assists in guiding the tool. My left thumb extends almost to the limit and presses on the knife handle just above the blade at the beginning of the cut. The cut begins at the tip, and moves toward the hilt/butt as the knife slices into the cut. The stop is when the knife handle bumps into the spoon.
A Philosophical Stem
The spoons design employs the woods strength to great advantage. Think of it as having three parts: the bowl, the handle and the stem that joins the two. In most cases, the deepest part is also the largest. Because the stem meets the bowl at the narrowest point, it is deeper than necessary to give it the strength and stability it requires. It can be carved in the shape of a rib that hugs the bottom of the spoons bowl.
As the stem flows into the handle, it thins out to fit your fingers better. So then you make it wider, both for comfort and for appearance. Just as the handle reaches its end, it can gain a bit of thickness. A nice touch at the end is a carved finial.
When I am working with the spoons, I try to think of the shapes like a series bevels that flow one into the other. I also focus on curves. Some are subtler, others more prominent (see the opening and the above photos for a variety). A spoon that has too many flat places in it looks and feels lifeless. It is easy to move the spoon around as you carve. This is critical because the design has to work from all angles and from the hand as well as the eye. Cut a little, look a lot.
A subtle S. Every spoon is slightly different, but I aim for a gentle curve.
I try to make the side view with something of an S-shape to it. Sometimes the wood helps guide you, other times you have to make it happen. I want to give the bowl a lift at the top, then curve the bowl under the deepest portion that sweeps upwards towards the handle. You have two options: the handle’s end can sweep back a little or it can take a final lift up. There are many variations.
The Bowl Is Now
To shape the inside of the spoons 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 sweeps in the Swiss-made numbering scheme. You want to use your body, hands, and fingers in a way that allows you to cut efficiently.
Gouge. A gouge works and is a great way to start. But if you get hooked on spoon carving, consider getting a hooked knife.
With the spoon in my left hand, I hold the gouge in my right, way down on the tools shank. The heel of my right hand presses against the edge of the spoon blank; my left thumb reaches across the spoon to brace my right hand. My right heel is pivoting to initiate the action. The distance the gouge travels is very small. The cutting is across the bowls face.
Across the bowl. You can shape the bowl with a hooked knife.
Then along came the hook knife; it makes life so much easier than hollowing with a gouge. These tools come in many shapes; some are more rounded, others shallower. It can be held with your fingers. Your thumb will help you pull the knife into the desired cut. Except when you are reworking shapes, the knife will cut across the bowl most of its life. These tools come in left- and right-handed versions. I mostly use the righty, but there are places and times when the left-handed version is helpful.
I try to do most of the general shaping when the wood is still very green so at this stage the cuts leave a bit of a fuzzy surface. To give your work a finished texture, dry the spoon and then use extremely sharp knives to make the final cuts. Some carvers aim for a tooled finish while others use sandpaper, especially on the inside of the spoons bowl. Finish your work by applying a finishing coat. I use food-grade flax oil. After soaking my spoons in it, I wipe off any excess oil and bring my hand-carved utensils back to the table.
Spoon-fed Revolution
For me, spoon carving represents a great act. It helps cut through the mass-produced cheap culture that we have absorbed like zombies. Its such a simple household implement, taken to extraordinary heights. Why shouldnt our most basic kitchen stuff be beautiful? Get rid of plastic! Bill Coperthwaites line A Handmade Lifestyle: Search for Simplicity: is what I think of.
I long to live in a world that is filled with joy at the act of making things. Me, too.
Peter is the joiner at Plimoth plantation and coauthor of Make a Joint Seat from a Tree (Lost Art Press).
The Art Of Spoon Carving DVDBy Jarrod Stone Dahl
This woodworking video will teach you
- What to look out for in a tree that will make a good wooden spoon?
- These are the essential tools and basic grips that will allow you to make the most of each one.
- How to judge the ergonomics (how the spoon feels in your hands and mouth)
- How to add simple carved details that will personalize your spoons and set them apart
Product Recommendations
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