How To Carve A Pocket Spoon - Deborah Schneebeli Morrell

greetings my friends how are you doing this is zed from zed outdoors and i hope you're having an awesome day so today i am visiting a friend of mine who appeared on his channel before deborah schneiberly morel deborah how are you doing i'm fine said nice to meet you again nice to see you again yes it has it's been an eventful year it has been an eventful year but we managed we did yeah shame that zombies didn't come that's what i was waiting for the zombies oh the zombies oh yeah return of the zombies yes well they could still come that's it so yeah spoon carvers we're okay we've got the knives and we've got the axes we've got everything we've got all our weapons yeah that's it just need to brush up on episodes of the walking dead and that's it yeah that might be your more your culture than mine [Laughter] so deborah it's great to see you again um if you're not familiar um from the time of recording this video roughly about a year ago um it was at the beginning of 2020 wasn't it was it i lose track of time um yeah and you said it was raining it was it was raining yeah so we couldn't be outside at all yeah yeah so time goes very quickly yeah and we recorded a video the first time deborah appeared on my channel and we've recorded a how to carve a spoon video since then that video has done incredibly well and deborah you've been received really well with the audience yeah i actually did look at the um the comments and it put me up no end [Laughter] it was really wonderful actually people said really nice things so quite encouraging actually it was really nice up the audience got to see your process your insights and it was a really well received video now about to see deborah to record a follow-up video to that one and what we're going to be doing in this video is deborah is very kindly going to be demonstrating how to carve a pocket spoon now if you're not sure exactly what that entails we're actually going to be looking at a few examples in a moment now the reason why we had the inspiration for that video is when i did visit deborah last time deborah was showing a load of her spoons and she has a lot of spoons that she carves a very prolific carver and then we got around to seeing these dinky little pocket spoons and they were amazing they were really really nice and so uh conversations ensued um as i approached deborah look would you be up for doing a follow-up video and you gratefully said yes um yeah so nice to have a purpose to make my spoons and they were really lovely which we're going to see examples for in a moment so here's what's going to be happening in this video we're going to be looking at a few examples of pocket spoons after this segment here what we're then going to be doing we're then going to be looking at the axing of the spoon blank we're then going to move on to the straight knife work and then the curved knife work and then we're going to be looking at the finishing so if you want to follow along what i've done is i've put a timestamp below so if you look in the description just below this video and also on the timestamp as you're following along and watching this on youtube what you're going to see you're going to see the sections broken down now the reason for that is the following is this is essentially a teaching aid so as you move forward and you want to refer back to certain sections you can skip straight to it without having to watch the entire video my recommendations if you're watching this for the first time is to watch it in its entirety and then as you move forward the encouragement is from deborah to yourself so obviously have a go at carving a pocket spoon whether you've carved for the first time or you have some modicum of experience be it from a beginner intermediate or advanced the idea is is that demo will inspire you to have a go at carving a pocket spoon because what i'd be writing saying the principles are the same in carving a pocket spoon but because it's a bit more compact there are a few more nuances and a few more yeah i mean the principles are the same um yeah in in a funny way it seems like there's more possibilities because it's an unusual form of a spoon we were talking about it earlier you know um it's like can you can you invent a new kind of spoon a spoon is such a fantastic tool sort of fairly unchanged a bowl and a handle and then you know this pocket spoon thing i think it's is it from sweden they idea that the big bowl and the short handle yeah yes okay so that to me is the kind of you know not knowing about greenwood carving and spoon carving until i started it's a new concept and it's quite nice to to kind of investigate how you could make a different kind of spoon so it sort of frees you up a little bit and i'm very fond of the shape of the short handle in the large bowl um yeah so pretty interesting actually yeah i like doing them but you do you've got different handholds it tends to sort of disappear in your hands a little bit because it's much smaller and it's more difficult to wax out because you've not got much to hold on to but this is going to be the first time i'm seeing a demonstration of carving a small pocket spoon so it's going to be the first time for me to see the entire process how you approach it yeah so yeah i'm looking forward to learning myself as well so friends what we're going to do we're going to get straight into this video with your kind permission deborah we're going to look at a few examples yeah okay of your spoons another thing by the way i forgot to mention is and this i will mention throughout the video and at the end is there will be a link below to deborah's instagram um where you're going to be able to see a lot of her work and follow her personally but she has got a lot of detailed pictures as well of that and secondly i will put a link to deborah's etsy and on there she will have a lot of these uh spoons available that's if they last they typically don't last that long spoon um deborah's spoons but she will have some spoons the pocket spoons go yeah they always go it's interesting and um so we've got that and one thing as well is um i do a an accompanying blog post uh to these videos and the reason why i mention it specifically in relation to deborah is what i'm going to do is take up some close-up pictures of some of these spoons and some of the things she has going on and i'll embed it onto that blog post so all the links that i mentioned will be down below so without further ado we'll get straight into this video where debra is going to be teaching you how to carve a pocket spoon so deborah we've got a small selection here of your pocket spoons just one question if i may and that is where did the inspiration come from to carve a pocket spoon oh crikey that's a question um probably the first pocket spoon i i saw was made by barn and it was very intriguing and very beautiful and i just thought um that's an interesting shape um but otherwise it's just part of the spoon discipline isn't it when you're when you're a spoon carver you want to try everything and there's a big kind of pocket spoon thing oh i think i've probably seen some of adam hawkers which are incredibly beautiful i mean i i don't pretend to be nearly as anywhere near his skill level in fact i need to ask him about balance the spoons because that's a kind of thing about balance is terribly important the bowl and the handle and how they sit and i just really want to make a spoon that sits like that rather than like that so i've that's something i've got to learn myself um and it's obviously to do with the weight the distribution of the the the solid qualities of the wood you know and the lighter handle um and where where the neck is and everything haven't quite got that sorted yet but they're very they they do function they do function very well i mean you know my thing is different kinds of woods so um well all spoons are a vehicle for showing off the qualities of wood but somehow they're sort of concentrated down aren't they with a pocket spoon in a way i mean you know that's a fantastic little elm one with amazing it's a ring porous grain so i've put some ground cloves in it it's got a got a crack there unfortunately which i've repaired so that's that's beautiful that one is red oak it's completely mad a bit of heartwood there it's warped that one is a successful little one that is my only left-handed spoon which is um damson and i must say it was a very weird thing to carve it but i think i like it now so i'll do some more left-handers this is a kind of more baroque kind of type spoon more symmetrical um really like this handle and you know you can really go to town on the swoop here and up the back that's pear that one's going to martin hazel for a swap very honored that he liked it um what else uh there's another sort of more exaggerated form like that one i think that's baked birch yeah pretty sure so it's just darkened slightly this one was a plum spoon a little bit bigger actually with a smaller handle and i i carved it wet and it's been baked but it wasn't completely dry in the oven and then it's got a little crack there which is such a shame i whipped it out when i knew that was happening but it's too late so that's one to keep and then of course you can go really small i don't think you'd call these pocket spoons maybe you'd call them scoops um hawthorne cartoon oh um both hawthorne actually i think that one's baked a bit um this is a tiny little one mulberry one of my favorite woods that's a s that's lilac lilac is a dream to carve but you don't get much of it but i've got people who know i like it um and then that's more of a it's got a slightly longer handle it's more of a child spoon but you could easily use it as a pocky spool spoon that is baked um beach another favorite wood of mine i mean when you get beach in the right consistency it's just a dream to carve and this one is just fabulous because it's got these medullary rays and somehow i managed to get the the beginning of those rays right right there and then you get them on the top and sometimes baking it brings that out much more there's a more recent little mulberry one mulberry does darken with age so um that yellow won't stay unfortunately it'll stay in in some form but it'll just get darker so you know there's there's masses of them really field maple that's a lovely wood to carve i mean that's so lovely so fine and um yeah that's with those little horns on there that's a quite a nice fun thing to do i don't always decide at the beginning what the spoon is going to look like i just have the concept of a spoon and it's crank when i start and then it's sort of how it develops um is a little bit um of a surprise sometimes you know and how would you say it differs from a standard full-size eating spoon um i think it takes a bit longer i think you have to be more careful because you're very close with the knives in your hand i mean if you're if you're doing a spoon this size you're going to have all sorts of hot hand holes that you wouldn't normally i tend to do a lot of this kind of thing you wouldn't normally do when you're doing a larger normal eating spoon so that is you know you can imagine with a knife on that it's going to be pretty hard to film actually said because you won't see any spoon at all um but we're not doing such a tiny one today um yeah so i think as you've got the same considerations as with an eating spoon you know the the balance between the handle and the bowl although it's much shorter i mean normally with an eating spoon you have like a third bowl and two-thirds handle here you've got a much shorter handle and a slightly larger than handle bowl so you've got it's sort of back to front but the balance is still incredibly important and you know you know when it doesn't work um so that you you've got all those kind of design balance form considerations in the same way it's also concentrated down into a smaller smaller object really and you've got to think about how it goes in the mouth and how it goes in your pocket you know you don't want to make a kind of very delicate terribly delicate spoon because people have it in their bag or pocket and you don't want a spoon that could be sat on or you know broken so they have a certain sturdiness about them um the handles tend to be wider generally if they're if they're smaller it's usually when some there's been some fault in the wood and i've had that probably started off wider that's holly by the way which has been baked to that color it hasn't been burnished it hasn't been oiled yet so it's looking dull but it will kind of look really great when it's polished so deborah we're going to start off with the axe work before we do that you've had a change in axe since the last time i saw you yeah i do remember saying on the last video i love my axe so much i'm really attached to it and that poor axis i don't know where it is i mean it's safe but um i i had to get one of peter kovach's axe axe's soul soulwood creations and funnily enough um nearly all of our spoon club has got one now and so uh because they're so good and i must say that my oh i don't know if you should go too close on that in case it's got any nicks in it um and peter sees but um i got the small one in fact i saw it i saw the picture of this on instagram this with this half payment and i immediately messaged him and said peter i think i might have to have that axe and he said oh that's really funny deborah because when i made it i thought of you that was a really good sales technique or anyway i got it and um a good axe can improve your carving no end you know it it's sort of taken a bit of a leap i think since i got this axe so um you know i have to give it credit and i have to give peter credit because he's a very fine craftsman he's made lots of green woodworkers very happy yeah i have mine ordered with him that i'm picking up in about a month oh right you're going up to yorkshire that's where i'm from so i'd really love to love to go and visit him so with the wood we're going to be carving with today what's your wood of choice right well when i knew i was going to do this i i i found a few so this one is hazel and the reason we're using that is it's a straight grain and it's got no knots in it it's got no little branches or anything it's absolutely smooth the other woods which i thought might have been suitable this one is i mean when we cut that this is from um ryan best um it looks so brilliant i thought well i'll have a go at that it's nice and straight um but i've carved a spoon from it it looks a little bit dull so um but that's mostly not free this one is another of my favorite woods which is hawthorne probably good would get one out there's a bit of a knot there but it's only from there so you probably would get there's a few knots in but that it's hawthorne and hawthorne does that but that's also a fantastic wood really love it but i've decided to do the hazel because it's so it's kind of it's a lovely wood actually and it's such a british wood you know hazel now the hazel coppices are full of wild garlic and it's a you know hazel in england is a crop every six years it's cropped and on the allotment i use the hazel rods for my bean poles and the hazel sticks for my peas and i'm making a hazel spoon so it's an all-round good wood so basically um i split this this is the good half there's always a good half and a bad half i'm now going to make it into a billet which is basically a kind of the profile on the top would be a kind of reptile rectangle yeah so basically i'm just take the sides off like this when you're waxing it's very important to get the right height so i'm using this little axe block to to take to do this kind of work because it's actually um you don't want to hurt your back you don't want to be leaning over and you need to be safe so i'm just taking the sides off here so make it into more of a block shape you see it just goes much better this axe it's pretty important when you're axing i mean this is the the rough axing but i've noticed a lot of people when they use an axe they're doing this so the axe is actually not allowing the axe to to to use its full potential i mean the whole thing about an axe is the weight of it so it's very important that your wrist is very loose and the axe you don't grip it too high tightly you need the weight of the axe to do the work i think you know people get frightened of an axe and rightly so because it is a very dangerous tool it's not quite sawn straight so it's looking a bit crooky but we can sort that out okay i'm going to carve my spoon tangentially which means um i'm taking the bowl out from the bark side and i do that because although on hazel you don't see that many rings you would if you baked it actually it also has the wonderful modular rays and you just get more you get the ring pattern in an oval shape in the bowl and i i must say i prefer that but i'm actually going to um so it's usually let's just have a think i'm going to take this off a bit so on this side where i'm going to make the spoon i'm just going to start the scooping out a kind of banana shape which i will exaggerate when i it's a little bit difficult to do this actually it's just to do with the amount of pressure you apply but you can see that it's beginning to do its um it's thing it's still a very big billet so we need to take it down quite a lot so that's a good i mean what i aim to do is to have a scoop down to the bottom of the bowl and then coming up again so i'm going to start with that i'm going to take a bit more of the wood off i think we'll put the bowl here um take a bit of the wood off the back so that we're not dealing with so much you can see my hand is always back but the aim really is not to bring the axe over here or anywhere near your hand really so i'm kind of recreating that scoopy banana shape on the back this end is the handle end take a lot away here the best most efficient way of taking wood off is to take it off the sides like that and then you've got a ridge here you just cut through and take that off as well so that's the beginning obviously a pocket spool is an awful lot shorter than that but you need to lose certainly on this on the sawn end depends how quick how recently you sawn it you need to lose a bit because you might have some checking some cracks at the end which you could go around down here and and um compromise the spoon so i think what i will do is let me have a there's a lot of thinking and a lot of looking when you're making a spoon when particularly when you're axing out of blank i mean you know what you do now is going to set you up for this kind of spoon that you want to make okay so so that's something so if we have the bowl here and the handle here the deepest part of the bowl will be about here so i'm just going to take her [Music] now you have to be careful not to go too far [Music] how deep you do that depend shows you exactly what kind of crank you're going to get so we're just going to axe down there now this is you you need to be a little bit more careful with the axe here because you don't want to go beyond that point and take off the bottom bit there so you're just going to the depth of that saw cut and you can see you can even hear the axis it's less i'm doing a bit of a slicing motion here um i think we've sort of got in there shall i turn it so you can actually this block is in the way so i'm just going to so that's the beginning and then this is where i i do what i call the dave cockcroft position you have to stand at your x-block with your legs like that because this is a slicing motion and you don't want the axe to come slip and i'm now going to take this much off here to meet that line and if you notice i'm just using this part of the axe and i'm really doing a sort of circular salami slicing motion very important to not let it go too far there because if you go into there you'll undercut this bit here and you'll have a lot of trouble with the knife afterwards trying to eliminate that so it's a matter of judging and then i'm going to turn it around this way very awkward looking hand position i'm doing the same thing just the top top bit of the axe it's just like a knife i'm using it like a knife really so that's your crank so i think before we go and use the other block and do the drawing of the spoon i'm just going to take some more of this weight off i think this is the point at which i'm thinking spoon you know i'm thinking i'm thinking central lines um i'm thinking symmetry there's a lot of bulk on the back which i'll just take away i'm still doing that cutting the corners off so much easier you take if you get a chip on your axe be really careful to get it off because that can cause the axe to slip okay so there's the point again so there you've got the low point of the bowl and the high point of the back of the bowl there so that's the point at which we now go on to the other x block and i'm going to draw so debra what's next next is drawing drawing is incredibly important i don't use a template i find i i just it's just not in my nature i think it would just make me feel very constrained i just want this the the wood and the shape to always kind of be um flexible and moving i mean even when i draw it can still change so basically the most important thing is to draw a central line you can use a ruler but i tend to draw it by eye and your best guide is to foreshorten the foreshorten the spoon and look down the line and then you'll see whether it's straight um okay i think that goes down the the rings about here so the top of the spoon will just be a little bit above maybe a couple of centimeters above and then the bottom of the spoon will probably be somewhere like here and the handle will probably be i'll do about this much they're almost equidistant actually but there's all sorts of funny things will go on here so then i just draw my spoon that's in my head i tend to get the top of the spoon symmetrical it won't be completely symmetrical because it's my eye it's not a machine and then i'm always turning it i'm always looking i think the best thing you can do whatever you're doing but particularly when you're carving a spoon is just look all the time don't just feel but look as well i'm making it slightly bigger but i'll probably make it smaller again so i'm always thinking about this distance that distance how similar it is it's only at the top but it's going to slightly change so this is where i'm doing the right-hander again sorry left-hander folks um so i can make it smaller by just going inside that line i think there's a little bit of a large spoon for a pocket spoon so we're going to go a bit smaller for those who may not be familiar with the differences between a left spoon and a right spoon could you just touch on that briefly um yeah so although i have heard arguments about this and i'm not really qualified to to be part of it because i haven't done enough left-handed spoons but a right-handed spoon will have a it's a bit like a shoe and that's your big toe and that's your little toe there so it curves around here and it comes to a more of a sharper but not very sharp point there i mean these are which i've done earlier they're all right-handers um well this one is a little bit more symmetrical actually it's more difficult to be symmetrical i think so this spoon is getting a bit big but um so if i if i draw inside that line basically i'm going to wax onto the inside of the line and then i want to have quite a wide handle because you can actually take wood away but it's you know it's a cliche to say you can't add it but it's so true so you must always start with a little bit more than you need and then it'll be something very simple like coming down here i'm looking again down the thing so i can see that that looks quite symmetrical and then what i'll do is i'll although i won't axe this out i'm going to mark these little pinches at the neck which gives the spoon a kind of refinement like that that might be a little bit too big but i can adjust that i can probably adjust it with the axe and then there's even more adjustments are going to happen with the knife but this is the kind of so that that doesn't look quite right so that you've got a good beginning really and you've got enough to play with so yeah that's that's ready to wax now so anybody's interested this is a china graph pencil what i normally i mean it makes a nice mark on the wood what i normally use is um a watercolor graphite pencil which is great and when the wood is fresh and a little bit moist it makes a lovely line but can't find it but this is a good line anything that makes a good strong mark is good a 2h pencil wouldn't do much good so basically i'm going to access out now this is i think this is my favorite bit of um of making a spoon and it's all to do with being really really free with your axe it's an extension of your arm it's got its own weight don't constrain the axe let the axe do the work for you but obviously you have to think about safety so what i start to do is i obviously take off the big bits like that i'll turn it around this way but it'll come around the other ways i'm going to make it a little bit thinner because my whole thing about drawing with an axe is it's easier when there's not a great big block so i'm just going to thin it down a bit and i'm working on this axe block because the height is much better for the kind of work i want to do now it's getting a bit of a dip actually which is a little bit more difficult okay so that's um from this point the high point i would be axing that way because that's the grain direction and i have to turn it over to wax the other bit off because the cha the grain changes at the high point [Applause] so [Music] right so at this point i'm going to saw i'll draw the lines here if i just axe down here it would go if i was not careful enough it could go straight through the bowl there so i'm going to do some stop cuts i always do two and i'm just going to draw it don't always draw it but just to show where they're going to go um quite important when you do this not don't go too far yeah that's probably far enough and then the second one [Music] this little groove here very very useful and this block really useful so it holds it there it's a bit like a vice i need to make the groove a bit bigger actually to worn away second one [Applause] so there's those stock cuts i'm going to cut off the end of the spoon here more difficult one of the worst cuts you can get is when the knife the the sword jumps out of the thing onto your finger we've all done it i'm probably better to have a finer blade saw for this one of those little japanese ones i mean this is japanese but the japanese i don't know what they're called but they've got much finer teeth and um a lot of people on when they're making a small spoon would leave a lot up there to hold on to but i'm afraid i don't do that um just one question yeah you know you cut off the end of the spoon with you saw for the benefit of those who are newer to carving um why did you prefer to sort it off than accident oh the reason why i don't axe that is the um the danger is that if you get to that point and it's not really solid on something it'll take a split off here the pressure from the axe could take a split off there so the the soaring is all to stop that no there's funny accidents happening right okay so the whole thing still a bit chunky just take a little bit [Applause] my hand is right now up the top um okay so i'm going to come in so i'm now holding this finger onto the axe itself here and i'm now doing what i call drawing with the axe it's this slicing mo movement and if you can see you can be very accurate i'm just following that line there when i started carving with an axe i just could not get the axe to go where i wanted it to go and i thought oh god this is so difficult i'm not going to be able to do it but you know it's practice now when i do the other side and i hold it towards me i'm now doing this this end of the axe a little bit more difficult and then if you notice from this point down there i'm always carving that way but when we get to this point i'm going to carve that way because the grain direction has changed okay i might now this block is a bit too high i wonder if i should use the other one so i basically just changed to this axe block although the height is not so good this upstand is a bit better because it's a pocket spoon it needs to be a bit lower um it's good to rest it against something here and you notice what happens we get to that point and it won't go any further but even when you've got this on you still got to be very very careful and now if i carried on down there it could go through here so i'm going to do it this way we might have to x we have to do a lot of this with a with a knife there's still an awful lot of wood here which i'll take off in a minute obviously when your hand is very near and the axis near your hand you're going to go very gentle axe movements to start with [Applause] it's got quite a crank on this one so it's a little bit more difficult to using a bit like a knife there so it's still really chunky far too chunky so i'm going to take a lot more off um it's really worth taking off as much as you can with the axe because knife knife work is harder and i think it's i think it's more dangerous i mean if you're not careful with an axe it's dangerous but so i'm going to leave just over a centimeter i think maybe a bit more than that centimeter and a half it's also very hard to move all this off with an with a knife so this is a point which you you don't want to make any mistakes because you'll lose your you'll lose your blank [Applause] or you'll have to make a smaller smoothie if you you take too much off yeah could take a bit more off there i think i don't need that bid that's a bit exaggerated i think we just need to go in here c that's pretty rough actually for me i don't know why i like to be really neat with the axe just going to take that little corner off little taps you know when you're taking a corner off like this because too big too this is sort of nibbling almost because if you do too bigger a bash with the axe you could take off too much or split it um so that's pretty good i think we're nearly there a little bit more there obviously we need a little bit more depth here even if we go thin at that point we need the depth to give the strength [Applause] okay now what i want to do with the spoon is to to give much more of a a scoop down here we did a little bit with an axe but i want to do more but i'll do that with a knife because it's the kind of wood that you can it's okay to use the knife to do that sometimes if it's a bit harder you would use the you do it with the axe to start with but that is a very awkward movement i mean i do what i tend to do if i do that is um i can just take the sides off here because that will show people look at this and think oh what's she doing you know but i think i'm just beginning to what we need to do is get this scoop it's just a little beginning there so compared to it's pretty similar i think it's got a bigger crank actually than some of the others which is nice so hazel hawthorne sported birch oh god i only did it yesterday i can't even remember something something nice i've just got i can't think what that is it will reveal itself okay so i'm going to redraw the um the shape because it's got a little bit damaged by the axe so and this is the time at which i can readjust the um the shape so i might take that bulge off there and off here a bit i mean i can draw with the knife as well now that's more the shape i think and then this bit come in here like that so these these all your lines that you draw need to be sort of joined up and flow so i wouldn't just draw those unless they were in relation to this and that's how the spoon has its own kind of ripeness or kind of elegance okay so i'll just exaggerate the middle line is so important visually i'm going to just take these little points there i'm going to bring this down there i think that's it's not one of yeah okay i might even shorten that we'll see yeah i think it could go a bit shorter i mean i you know can only decide that by just basically looking at the proportions that feels better so um i've actually just got this fantastic adrian lloyd knife i was so entranced by the color of it um normally i don't use a long i don't use a 106 i use a 120 morrow knife which is this one because i'm because i do such close work i don't want the point of it to to um stab me like it did there um but anyway i'll start so i'm doing the same thing with the axe as i'm doing with the knife um or the same thing with the knife as i did with the axis basically the knife is drawing it's not just following the lines it's got its own kind of intent really it is actually forming the shape and the body of the spoon and this is very nice very nice um wood to carve quite important to see i mean that reinforced pull thing is a good one but it's hard to see at the moment we need to see what's been drawn don't you just love this noise i love the noise of you notice my wrist it's all in the wrist i'm not actually putting i'm not doing this i'm doing this it's a safe position really because the the knife's not going anywhere except up and then i'll just take it those very bits just take them off a bit not important at this stage to be neat there okay i tend to work on one side than the other side and then you get an um you get much more of a feel of the balance and the symmetry when you do that rather than just making one side perfect bit like when i was drawing it okay so this is another knife hold when you put it to towards you here this movement is holding it with your fingers here and you're twisting it in a movement like that so the knife blade eventually ends up facing you so it's not going to go there can't go there at all so although it looks dangerous it's actually safe when i first started carving and i got the really sun crisp book about knife holes i just thought oh no this looks completely mad i don't want to do anything that looks so dangerous with the knife you know you're always taught never point the knife to you of course you do that all the time this is the i don't know has it got a name the thumb push which is a movement i use an awful lot it's um my thumb is sort of it's not quite pushing it it's the knife is moving like this very often when a knife moves like that it um it slices much better okay so we're going to get this side now so the same grain thing is from there forwards it's that way from there backwards it's that way so i'm gonna do this and then [Applause] if i want to push it rather than pull it i just have to turn the spoon around i'm afraid this is my comfortable position so i do an awful lot with this so i'm just looking and looking and looking now so what's wrong there's too much here so we'll take a bit more off there there's lots of different moments in the spoon where you can change and refine these outlines so i'm pushing not not as i was doing before now i'm pushing on the knife there to give it so that is a lot of pressure from here and from my thumb just to cut this end part off i'm not going to go right across like this i'm going to a lot of people do this but there's too much wood at the moment to do that so i'm turning it round and i'm coming from the other side so that i'm not going to have a bit ping off so basically you're creeping up i'm creeping up really and then when i get to the join i just go on to the the point of the knife there and now i can take a smaller bit off like that anyway this is all rough at the moment now before i do these little pinches there's too much wood in there so it needs to be thinner but what i'm going to do first is i'm going to do the cur the curve of the handle because i need to have enough wood to play with because i'm not quite sure how far i'm going in so basically i'm going to push hold it there bring the knife up here and take exaggerate that curve on the side so you can see how it comes down here and i'm going to copy that on the other side and obviously the drawing i have to be redone that's why i find you know if you're working with a template there are points at which you that's quite a nice so i've got both sides down i'm now going to take the middle out i think i've chosen the wood well here it's very nice to carve and it's just in the right condition so i think it was probably only cut down a few days ago [Applause] there that's what i want i think what barn calls a saddleback spoon um i can't think of a better name really it's a kind of upwards upward scoop swoop not scoop okay so i'm just going to draw draw my central line again don't want to lose that foreshorten it to check draw my little pinches taking it from here same inside um yeah looks so although it seems a bit nuts to go to a bigger knife just want to try i'm only going to be using the point and i'm doing this twisting again so basically we just actually i think i think i'm going to just take a bit off the back first and that is this really useful i don't move the knife i hold the knife on my thigh like that and i just move the spoon and i find that really a very useful way of reducing down a lot of people do this i can't do it because i don't know my elbows don't like it i'm taking the volume of wood down now because once you do refining you don't want to be have all this wood in the way so notice the grain direction from about here it's going backwards just basically just taking a lot of this off just using the point of the knife here actually um i go this way i can i can do this always be really conscious about how far you're going always look at the edge here you don't want to go more than seven mil or something well that's about four mil there but still more to do this is another way of going across the grain a good way of getting some of that bulk out you need to get that smooth flow around here there's always one more difficult side and that's this is that side i'm gonna do this is where a pocket spoon look how near to my hand the other hand that point is you know so i find myself sort of just naturally changing knife positions i don't know i suppose i could analyze why i mean this one it's probably just because my hand gets tired doing one thing and it's quite useful to not always repeat because you'll get some kind of injury okay i need to come much more off here um see i don't really want the bowl to be too thick so we don't want it to be too deep i mean i think one of the mistakes that i made and everybody who starts being making makes is they make the bowl too deep and actually if you look at spoons that you've used metal spoons they don't have deep bowls um and it's more difficult to carve a deep bowl but people get stuck with it so just getting a bit getting a bit better so let's go in that little scoopy bit now twisting the wrist obviously you can only go halfway then you turn the spoon round and at the point where the pencil marks you just come in like that this this little pinch thing really gives the spoon a kind of elegance um but you've got the depth here so you can make it narrow but it's still very strong i'm coming i mean i would finish this all with my finishing knife i'm just this is roughly it's a funny movement because you're going like this but you're also twisting it you're going across the grain as well and that cuts under i remember when i was learning how to do this i just always go on it's like cutting a leg off a table you know to make it shorter you just go on and on and on and trying to make them all level and you just go too far there's all sorts of ways of not having that join in the middle here i mean the most important thing i think you can do is have very sharp knives so you don't really necessarily need to have that so that's one side done okay we're gonna do the other side hope that it matches so i'm thinking about it from the front from the side and from the back so you've got those three planes that each one of them needs to be right for the spoon to feel right um and it's at this stage really well it's mostly at the axing stage i think where you've got to you're setting how the spoon will be don't worry too much about at this stage if one side doesn't look quite like the other because you can just you can just adjust it i think this position here i don't know whether this is a known position or i've invented it but basically i put this thumb on that hand on that thumb so that the knife can't go into me it's not so likely to happen there but there are other positions of holding the knife where that could happen it actually has happened but it's a very helpful you know it's a bit difficult to have it like this because it's so close to you because you're out of focus so um that's why i do it like that away from me just always check on the front how it's working with my pencil lines okay so what always happens to me is i get a slope here and a bulge there it's just weird i don't know why just take this bulgy bit off a bit okay i don't mind a little bit of difference but okay so this is important as well that this looks right so i've cut a bit more away from there so i'll have to do the same on this side [Music] i think rather than having a line i think we might just join this one up and i'm just reducing the amount of wood again it's lovely when you can get those can you see those kind of little facets here we can refine those a bit later it's always easier to do it on that side than this side i mean i do get to a point where i do an awful lot of faffing around on a spoon but the moment we're not there yet i'm still taking the wood down before we do the final cuts i mean this this wood would be wonderful for doing a faceted back you know with long facets people make a thing of the facets you know doing these large ones like this [Music] okay so we need to get much more off the back here so you see how tight the knife my hand and the spoon is [Music] okay [Music] so now i'm going to sort of dress the front of the spoon a bit so that i have a a bit of a sense of what's happening as these lines they need to kind of flow round here so this is a nice knife cut this one here where you kind of pivot it around but you do need to get your thumb pad well out of the way for this and um it's just the first drawing of that rim of the spoon which you need to have it you need to have this nice curve here you want to get rid of your saw marks on this side i'm going to have to do it like this drawing it up a bit doesn't matter about the middle because the spoon knife is going to remove that okay um you need to check whether oh that's pretty good actually sometimes you know you'll notice the spoon is like that and you've got to adjust it and then you finally haven't got enough wood and stuff but this is actually this is working quite well so the danger of going too low when you saw is that you get this cut that you've got to take out and that makes this swoop a bit a bit deeper and also a saw can bruise wood so even though you've cut the saw marker out you've still got a bit of the bruising and that's a bit of a remnant and you don't want you don't want to see that at all okay i think we're ready for um actually i'll just do the back here so we've got the scoop on the front and i want to echo that on the back it's too thick here so basically i'm going to take some of this off so we have an inward scoop here you can just begin to see a little bit of the grain and the you know i don't know if you can see it on the camera but hazel is subtle but it's a bit of a lovely wood okay so we've come in yeah and i've got to take this out so i want to follow that curve upwards so take uh so it's beginning to go in the right direction okay that's pretty lumpy here we want a much more shallow slope towards the front here otherwise it would be pretty uncomfortable in the mouth [Applause] a bit of a lump here to get that out yeah that looks a bit better i'll obviously refine that more okay so there's a lot more to do on there but let's just get the scoop spoon knife now so what's next debra so i'm just going to take out this the bowl of the spoon now with a spoon knife this is a new spoon knife from nick westerman which i'm surely pleased to be jolly pleased to have i mean i've got i do use other spoon knives i like the compound curve the robin wood ones the wood tool ones and the open curve um they're both really good knives um and i've got this one and then i've got a scorp which on some woods is really fantastic this is a nicknaster well it's least offer nick westerman blade it's a slightly too big i think for these spoons so i won't i won't use it i won't use it but um probably can do it all with this one so basically now i'm just going to scoop out the center of the bowl probably do it like this um it is sometimes difficult to go all the way across which is the best thing to do but don't worry if you you know you don't you get those little islands that you have to [Applause] so i'm going to start off i start off going across to make the bowl shape and then obviously you can change the angle of your of your knife but we need to get quite i don't think we want to go too deep which would mean i'd have to take off more on the back i'm now coming from the front down which is the grain direction to the middle come this way so i don't think i'm that brilliant at scooping out the beginnings of a spoon though [Applause] you see how little the spoon is really and with with a spoon like this you've always got the um the tools really close to your hands really important to have a sharp spoon knife because well apart from blunt tools being a bit more dangerous they just don't work as well so always scoop out a bit more from the back of the spoon and then it gets shallower towards the front i might just try with the open curve one because sometimes i find that easier it's just a matter of just digging away until you get a nice smooth bowl and then it's actually so much easier the beginning is difficult when you haven't got that smoothness coming through um and presumably most people know that the grain direction is is like on a spoon is like there there there and there and then you can do a cross one like that so it's really important to remember that otherwise it can get uncomfortable and so that goes easily but you can feel you can feel where it stops this side you would do like that this side you would do like that and that side you would do like that and then you can if there's a join you take it across like that so that's just it roughed out really so you need to feel it now because it's quite nice to have a shallow bowl but we don't want to have a thick bowl so that would mean taking out a bit more from here and this point is really important that you're not taking too much out you need to feel that finger and that firm and you obviously you just have to sense what's between them um because it's all too easy to take too much off and then find a hole in your spoon so i'm feeling it all the time really and then at the end you feel it and you feel for lumps yeah that feels quite good some maybe i'm thinking about a bit of a there might be a little kind of fan shaped here so we'll take that side off [Applause] [Applause] and a lot of these knife knife movements are very very repetitive that's why it's quite good to change position um so that feels you can just feel where the lumps are so it's a combination of feeling and looking maybe that needs to be a little bit flatter there okay so now we've got to the point that's going up i think we need to take this down a bit i'm going to take that down and join up here so i do go back over things i've done before and each time they get refined a little bit more so you don't ever finish one part of a spoon and go on to the next part you treat the whole thing as one really because whatever you do on one part it affects the other part you can't you can't think of a spoon in different elements it's just one object in itself and every part is connected okay so these lines are nice and important lines here so we want to get those right and what i'm going to do is i'm going to add a little curve in there just to give it a little bit more elegance so i'm holding my finger in that little gap there and bringing the knife down i'm just taking the knife in and then out so we're going into that curve it doesn't really like doing this you might do it because you're actually creating a breaking the grain i can deal with that when i in the finishing cut so we're just getting a little curve in there it just adds a little touch more elegance and then i'll just repeat the same on the other side coming from the outside of the curve down and in and then when you get to the in bit you're just flicking your wrist now this side is not breaking oh they're just bringing the grain so and you can exaggerate that um i think this side i'm going to have to do it with my finishing knife okay now we're going to do the outside of the bowl um because it's very lumpy i'm going to start here halfway around the curve and just try and get this smooth continuous line [Music] here okay and then take it from here the other direction okay that's quite good do the same on the other side so this curve and this line are connected there's no separation and it's very important that they flow because if you if they don't flow the spoon won't look right okay so these are okay because these sides are right because you're going down the length of the grain here you're cutting across the grain so it helps when the wood is a little bit more flexible and more green okay so always got an eye on the contour really i don't want to point i don't really like points on spoons because i just think that might not be too comfortable in the mouth so although it is a a junction here i'm just going to soften it okay so we've got the outside we now have to get the top plane which is this one here so i'm going to take it from here down as far as it'll we want to get a nice curve in there um so that bit needs to come out i think so i'll get to as far as it'll go with the grain it'll stop and then i'll put the knife up here on this point and i'll bring it down to join in so i'm just gonna do it like this this so i'm just meeting it or we can do it like this is more conventional i suppose you always want to see that side is that a good side we're going to do the inside edge soon and then this is very important to see how the both sides match up okay so this one coming down and then [Applause] the thing is to slightly chamfer it outwards not 45 degrees i mean i'm not very good on angles 20 degrees or something um this is difficult this corner this is where you can chop off so i tend to bring it then from the inside edge towards the outside right i think what i generally i think i would take a bit more off with a spoon knife and then i'll be trying to make this a bit more neat inside so i'm trying to draw now with the spoon knife the inner the inner contour of the rim but we can adjust that as well do something at the top but i'm going to use a different spoon knife for that so i'm taking a bit out of the bowl but i'm also drawing the rim with the inside of the spoon knife this is frustrating because there's always a bit where you get a bit of tear out okay so i'm going to use this knife the compound curve the robin wood one i'm now going up into the back of the bowl because i think it looks nice and i can make that more symmetrical curve and obviously you've got a lot more wood here so you have to have this shaped knife to be able to do that but then we've got to match that scooping out up with this shallower bowl further forward and it's actually quite difficult to make it symmetrical so this side you hold it so it's gone down more that side so i think this is where a scorp is really useful because you can give it the same treatment on both sides because you know you either do the one side of the scope or the other still need to go a bit more so okay i would actually normally leave this spoon overnight to do the finishing cuts because it is quite wet and you get a much cleaner finish this is my worst bit that piece there that bit there where you get the junction of the grain is always hard to deal with there's always a bit so on these junctions it's quite a good idea to push the knife really into the wood and then it doesn't on the on the flat of the back then it doesn't dig in okay so last thing we do we've done the outside so now we're going to just go around the rim just being very conscious of the thickness of everything just the tip join up this is more difficult across the grain this is the most difficult this is my special hold which i'm sure everybody's invented reaching the difficult point just checking this is [Music] symmetrical okay so now it's mainly finishing and this is my lovely finishing knife which is some dave cockroft from a nick westerman blank beautiful little knife and i made the handle so i do all my finishing with this knife normally i would have left it for a to get a bit dryer but we'll do it because the wood is quite sort of biddeable really just one thing very quickly i notice your handles are quite long on your on your spoon knives is that intentional yeah i think because you change your position depending what you're doing really um i don't know i'm not an experienced handle maker i mean this didn't need to be so long i just had that yeah i made a few handles for my other you know the chip carving and things these i think i just thought well the wood tools ones are really good so i'm going to make it like those or even a bit longer i think you do you can get a bit more leverage can't you if you if you hold it yeah you do that push that that kind of push and then you know you want to do that so you've got the option to do different different positions really um i could go around the inside of that with the spoon knife again but i'm not going to do that today i'm going to do that tomorrow because um it's better for the better for the wood so basically now i'm finishing um that does mean quite a lot of still wood removing so we'll start here we'll come we'll refine that again pushing it up all the time and as i'm doing that i am thinking about the shape here so this is making that shape so i'll go right up to the top much smaller bits of wood coming off now okay i notice a lot of people are quite happy with all the different knife marks and the facets um and i tend to faff around a spoon i usually do it at night watching telly with a i do all the axing up at the allotment and then i do all this in my armchair the sitting room is just basically a wash with them wood chips doesn't seem really worth clearing them up because the next day they're there again and we haven't had very many visitors for obvious reasons so i don't need to tidy it up and all the wood chips they become allotment paths very useful okay so that's good those side profiles that one is a bit thinner than that one so i'm going to just take that one down a bit now i want to make a nice top here so i'm going to just first of all i'm going to make it the right shape from the front so that looks about right but what i'm going to do is i'm just going to take it down on the back in an arc like this you might even take it a bit more it just is a nice little elegant touch when you and you get sometimes it's really nice to get the exposed edge the exposed end grain depending on what the wood is which obviously this will this will do you need to leave a couple of millimeters along the front you can see how lovely this knife is it's just such a favorite i had the smaller one and i've sharpened it so much that it's turned into a kind of needle the difficulty with sharpening these knives these very fine knives is that you can get a sort of little curved secondary bevel on them um but actually because i'm very often using them to do curves and corners and you know in concave ones that's actually quite useful so there you get a little nice little touch on the back there right i'm just going to refine these in twist in twist your hand like that twist your hand sideways come from the other side like that and you shouldn't have any problems with a nice sharp knife of the join there is a little bit of a join issue there but bring it forward like that you see i'm twisting it across the grain cut that out okay this one just take a little curve off you've got much more ability to do these lovely little tight curves with a wonderful little sharp knife like this very often using just the tip of it okay well then i've got a little fluffy bit that sometimes when the wood is wet you can't do much about that you have to wait until it's dry to get that off okay i think that this this is where you can see if it's slightly asymmetric and it is slightly so i'm going to bring this one in a bit more okay i haven't actually carved hazel for a while and it is just a joy absolutely wonderful wood and now it's a perfect time in the uk to get it because it's all being oh actually probably in the winter for the from the coppices okay that's a bit better so now i'm going to chamfer off the edges i'm going to take that one in a bit there and that one in a bit okay so what's gone wrong here okay so this is where you can look and you can look and you just don't quite know what it is that's different from one side to the next i find myself looking for ages one of the best things though to do is to look up um see your phone in silhouette against the sky and now i can see what the problem is it's more curve on that side than that side which is a shame because i don't really want to take the curve out but i probably have to to match it anyway i'll do i'll do more of that later anyway bring this in here and you see how easy it is to do with this lovely little point here that's it and then this one this one wood is a little bit more difficult on this side sometimes the wood defies all the rules you know like grain direction you don't quite know why i'm sure lots of very experienced spoon girls know exactly why but i'm i'm not sure it's not quite symmetrical i'll take it's going to have to it's going to have to do now the back that's a bit ugly so we're going to take this curve up and into there this little facet and then the next door facet try and get the the rim the same thickness and then bring this facet up here and then i think we've got room for a another one okay just check where they are see if they match on both sides so that facets gonna come up into there this one's gonna join now one one more and then the middle join that facet up from this side there join this side up okay just take this edge off they here it to be too sharp okay so just take off all the marks this is dangerous i mean you could do it like that but it's mad on this on a spoon like this because you i'm i can't focus that close you might be able to see a beginning of a split there which would be a bit unfortunate but i'll put it in a bag a plastic bag overnight i think if you're a beginner don't do this movement it's it's you know you've got to be really in control of your tools and until you're completely familiar um i wouldn't do it it's not that safe okay so i'm going to chamfer off the edge here always best to take off those points more comfortable it looks nicer um and then this one i've just put my hand on the point there and i'm just going to take off a little curl coming down here okay and then this side and the most important one is this chamfer here so i'm going right back here to take the angle both sides and take it from this point here this is about a 45 degree chamfer you can make it as deep as or as small as you want i mean sometimes the deeper ones are quite attractive on this kind of spoon okay see how much you have to move the spoon so that's probably about as far as you can go with a wet with wet wood ah i'm just going to take this just be a little bit neater on the back it's a bit random at the moment that's probably the last thing i will do before drying it also this is the point at which you can even out the the rim well not the rim but the kind of right angle that comes down from the rim you don't want it to be too many different um it's got to be even to look sort of elegant whoops a bit thicker there don't want a thick rim to the end of the spoon because that's the bit that goes in your mouth you can go on you know doing this for a very long time then just follow those one two three one two whoops let's put another one here i like doing these that's like drawing um so basically we'll we'll sort of leave it i think at this stage um but just as long as everybody knows that there's a little bit more faffing around certainly for me to make that spoon how i want it to be just get that there i don't know can you see that the facets in the lie you can just about see them i think that one's not it's got a little bit of a nick in it yeah there we are a little hazel spoon so now at this stage where i've done the you know made the spoon made then shape the spoon everything it's still not for me it's not finished it has to be finished when it's completely dry so what i do is i get plastic bag depending on how wet it is also how cold it is outside because you know if it's very wet and very cold and the house is heated or i'm carving by a fire that sets up so lots of stresses in the wood and it could actually crack so this is a bit of a vulnerable time so what i tend to do is i tend to put some of the freshly bits of wood chip in the bag put the spoon in the bag and if i'm going to carry on working on it i'd seal the bag that would keep the moisture in but the moisture in the spoon probably go into the wood chip um but i'd feel it the next day and if it felt a bit dryer i'd probably leave it a bit longer with the bag open so that it was really pretty dry but it was reducing the chance of it splitting by being in a very very warm atmosphere and then obviously i do my um i do my finishing with this finishing knife and all it is really is just refining refining it um getting some more of the bumps out you just get cleaner lines when when the wood is dry when it's wet it tends to be a bit furry or tear out a bit although this is quite good so it's just much more satisfying and um so if that goes in the bag like that seal it up let it still seal it's so old this bag anyway so that's there if i want to leave it a bit longer sometimes i put a bit of orange peel in the bag as well that's quite a good tip do you recommend an ikea ceiling bag or no i just happen to have an ikea one i usually use some waitrose of course i'll check you out but maybe we'd get waitrose to sponsor us or something i did actually make this um this uh sheath knife sheath out of an oakley oatley um oat milk carton and then i tagged them and they wrote to me and they were they said can we send some photographs and they were really they were really pleased but they're really good they're really good those cartons for making sheaths i need to make i need to make some more actually so we've touched on the drying we've touched on the finishing cuts um burnishing so i know burnishing is something you normally do and that's to kind of obviously smooth off the surfaces yeah so we kind of spoke off-camera you said um that we could kindly obviously show a demonstration of that yeah and what we're going to do for those that are watching we're going to record that straight after this video we're going to record it as a separate small tutorial because there's no standalone tutorials on youtube so far uh talking about burnishing spoons um so guys if you're watching this video if you're watching it when it's come out then just hold on it will be out very soon for those that are watching it and the burnishing video is already out there will be a link below in the description and taking you to that that will show you step by step how debra burnishes the spoons so lastly oiling what are your processes for oiling i use um walnut oil i don't use very much i don't really understand why people kind of steep things spoons in oil baths and all that i mean it's basically the oil's got to dry and it needs to be sort of just in the surface of it to dry i would have thought um so i just use a rag and i rub it on and then i probably let it leave it for a bit and then i rub on another bit of oil but hardly any and that's it then after that you you hello how'd you let it dry how long did you let it dry for well i don't think i'm very good at all these technical things but you know probably a couple a week or so i don't know how long it takes to dry no doubt someone will tell me but they're not that's hit the spoons but i don't use a lot of oil on i don't like them to be all full of oil so um they feel quite dry when i send them out and then after that the spoon is done then after that the spoon is done on to the next one so there you have it my friends that is a right footed video deborah thank you so much pleasure absolute trooper thank you it's really good for me to see your process as well how you approach everything especially a spoon that's obviously smaller yeah it's it's very nerve-wracking being filmed i mean before when i was thinking about it i was thinking how's it going to work because i take so long to make a spoon and i fluff around and then i surprise myself actually made a spoon in what didn't seem too long i don't know how long it was but everybody's how we edit yeah we're interested in yeah yeah yeah but no you've done really well it's really great to see um so friends as i've mentioned throughout this video and at the beginning so obviously i've recorded a video with deborah previously showing how to carve a full-size spoon a link to that will be down below if you haven't seen that already also as we alluded to just earlier is the burnishing part of this we're going to record this as a separate video so that video is already out by the time you're watching this once again check the link below in the description and you can also watch that video there may be a possibility we'll record a third video don't want to make any promises just yet it's just based on uh timing for today and the timing we have for the filming but the very least the burnishing video will definitely be out and so like i said a link below will be to that also um i mentioned to this and mentioned this before i'll put a link to deborah's instagram she's very active on instagram it's a great way of keeping in touch with debra if you have any questions queries or simply want to kind of message her uh receive a lot of requests when people just want to message you yeah i do so so always point people to deborah's instagram yeah link below will be to that's um just to mention it on cameras plot and ponder plot and ponder correct yeah and lastly i'm going to put a link to deborah's etsy uh link to that will be down below and you can kind of see the work that she has on there if she has any of uh anything available to sell like i said you know a lot of the stuff doesn't hang around too long she will you will have i believe a few spoons ready yeah this video comes out i will i'll have some pocket spoons yeah excellent stuff some of my favorite spoons of deborah's you know she does some amazing work in general but the pocket spoons are amazing so like i said all the links below to everything that i mentioned um before we depart are there any parting words from your good self um well no thanks for giving me the opportunity and it's really nice to do a film a year later because um after that one i did last time i worried terribly about my axe technique and i thought all these brilliant people be watching it or maybe they didn't watch it but i just thought i could have done it better and i didn't saw the crank in and things like that last time i mean i don't always do it but it's very good to do that to show people the best well the safest way i think and the most reliable way to do it so i'm glad i had the opportunity to to do that again and to put it right i appreciate you having me back i know the audience loved you the last time around so it's great to come back you know to kind of build upon what we filmed before yeah it's always fun zed i really enjoy it come back again hopefully not another zombie apocalypse in between but i'd love to once again i really do appreciate your time there great yeah so if you watch up until now really do appreciate that um if you have any comments or queries please do write them down below and as i mentioned once again all the links are below to everything that we've outlined in this video um and on that note i hope whatever you're doing you have a blessed day a blessed week ahead from deborah and myself that outdoors peace out oh yeah peace out

Channel: Zed Outdoors

Views: 25,822

Rating: 4.9447002 out of 5

Keywords: spoon carving, wood carving, how to carve a wooden spoon, how to carve a spoon, spoon carving for beginners, spoon carving asmr, green woodworking projects, self sufficiency, how to carve a spoon from wood

Id: C4m5u4Hs5uc

Length: 123min 42sec (7422 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021