From time to time, just for fun, and to keep my carving chops up, I like to carve a wooden spoon. I once looked at a nice wooden spoon and thought, "I wonder how hard would that be to make, and how long would it take". So, I thought I'd try.
Well, with the proper tools (a nice sharp gouge, mainly) and a lot of elbow grease, it's not particularly difficult and it takes from two to four hours depending on how hard the wood I've chosen is and how fancy you want the spoon to be. I thought I'd take some photos of the progress when I made my next spoon (that is, this one).
I've made spoons from several kinds of wood that happens to grow in my back yard. So far I've used maple, birch, plum and eucalyptus wood. So far plum made the best spoons. It's a good looking, hard wood that's not too difficult to carve. The spoon I'll be talking about here was made from plum wood.
The first thing I did was cut a slab of wood from a small aged plum tree trunk. On this blank plank I drew the outline of the spoon shape I wanted.
Then I cut the spoon shape out of the blank.
Then I took the cut-out spoon shape and clamped it to my workbench top and started to carve the bowl. This is easiest done if you cut the bowl before you carve the outside of the spoon, so that you have a flat bottom to keep the wood steady while the bowl is carved.
I moved over to a vise because it keeps a tighter grip on my work, and continue carving the bowl.
Once the bowl is roughed out, I give it a rough sanding.
Then I can start on the outside of the bowl and begin shaping it.
Then I start on shaping the handle.
Next I begin the final sanding, from very rough to very fine sandpaper.
Finally, I finished the spoon with a couple of coats of hand rubbed boiled linseed oil. That is followed by a fine steel wool rub-down and then hand polished with a clean rag.
The final result is a nice hand carved 12" wooden spoon. Time: about 3.5 hrs. over two days.
