Recommendation? I'm carving my first spoon.

L

Luke Jetté

Joined
Sep 24, 2018
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3
So basically i started carving my first spoon, iv'e gotten through getting the shape right. So now I am left to carve out the actual spoon part. As of now I only have a basic whittling knife, its plenty sharp but i just need advice to carve out the inside. If worst come to worst I'll just use a Dremel.
I also want to know what to seal it with. (The wood i'm using is bass wood btw).
Thanks
 
Lacking a hook knife, I would use the curved tip of a spey blade and try to work the bowel of the spoon down with that. But a good hook knife is the way to go. I like the ones made by pinewood forge.

If you plan to eat with the spoon then you need a finish that is food safe. There is a company called Tried & True. They make polymerized linseed oil finishes that are food safe. I have seen their products in the local Rockler, and Woodcrafters stores. Or search online.

O.B.
 
Luke, welcome to the forums and especially to the porch :)

I've always wanted to carve a spoon too, the tips these guys gave seem spot on, but basswood may not make a good spoon, more decorative I think, not positive on that, it might be a good place to start to learn though as that is softer wood to carve and may help with the learning curve.
G2
 
Old Biker is correct, Tried and True products are the best and they are food safe.

A quart goes a looooooong way.
 
I’m not really planing on eatin with this it’s more of practice for developing new strategies. I’ll try that
 
I recommend getting a Mora spoon knife, but I've made spoons with the spey blade on an Old Timer stockman.
I finish all of my spoons with olive oil.
 
Hi L Luke Jetté . Welcome!

I'd second O Old Biker 's recommendation of the Pinewood Forge spoon knives. I have the hook and one of the open sweep models and they are both well made and perform well. The hook is all you need to get started and perhaps all you'll ever need, depending on what you like to make and how you like to finish it. There's also a lot of good general spoon carving information on the Pinewood Forge site, BTW.

There's actually an article on carving a spoon without a hook knife in this year's Whittling issue of Woodcarving Illustrated. This is what the cover looks like, maybe you can still find it in stores:

VEsm0ltm.jpg


If you find you enjoy carving spoons, you might want to consider picking up a sloyd knife for the non-hook knife carving tasks. The Mora 106 is inexpensive and very popular among spoon carvers.

I finish my spoons with raw flax seed oil, which is easy to get at some grocery stores, but can take a long time to polymerize. I've read that you can accelerate that process with the UV from sunlight, but haven't experimented much with that yet.

By the way, there's a fair amount of spoon carving discussion in the first few pages of The Whittling Corner thread, including discussion of homemade crooked knives.

Have fun and be safe. :)
 
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