How To Carve A Teaspoon - Andreea Grad

hey guys how are you doing this is there from set outdoors and I hope you're having an awesome day so today I've come down to see friend and talented crafts woman Andrea Grant Andrea how are you doing and well said good to see you you too as well so if you're unfamiliar with Andrea she has appeared on my channel previously where we filmed a slew of video tutorials if you're unfamiliar with Andrea she's originally from Romania currently traveling here in the United Kingdom and while she's passing through London in my home City I've managed to catch up with her she's very kindly taking some time out to film this video along with other videos we're filming in this series so in this particular what you're going to be looking at is Andrea's process for carving a wooden teaspoon now a few things to mention before we get on with the meat and bones of this video number one you can tell obviously this is a very long video that's because she's going to leave no stone unturned taking literally a fresh piece of wood all the way to a finished product so there's a couple of things that Aid you in that process number one if you look at the bottom of this video you'll see a timeline and all the chapters my locked out so these are all the different sections in the entire process so visually you can see where we're at and it comes in with that if you look in the description below you will also see the chapters marked out there on the left hand side of that you'll see all the times the actual numbers along with the timeline YouTube has a very cool feature if you click on those times it will jump straight to that particular section this is so we can help you as you move forward and the hope is that you have a go yourself carving the two split alongside what Andrea's going to be showing in this video it's a teaching tutorial that will enable you to jump to particular sections when you're working on that particular section yourself three other things now the third thing being that we're going to put links below uh to all the other videos I highly recommend you go check those out the other thing is I'm going to put a link below to Andrea's Instagram you can see the plethora work that she gets up to as well as links to our website now the last thing to mention before we get on with the video is that what Andrea has very kindly done is she's actually compiled a downloadable spoon template to accompany the teaspoon she's going to be carving in this video is completely free for you to download so in order to access that one scanner we'll put a link down below as well as pin to the top of the comments so with all that out the way Andrea are you good to begin let's do it right guys solo I hope you enjoyed the rest of this video where Andrea grad is going to be teaching you how to carve a teaspoon so Andrea first intermission to review is it's cold hence why that's why so in terms of where we're going to begin obviously we're looking at wood selections so are there any recommendations you make in regards to Wood selection oh gosh um I mean anything really that's in good shape that's green that it can be soft it can be hard it doesn't really matter you just have to think about the size that you're going to use of the wood if we're making a teaspoon we don't really need that big of a piece so here we have a bit of a spalted beach that I cut off of another blank that I didn't need this extra part so this is perfect for a teaspoon it has a little bit of a knot in here but we can go around it and you have don't beautiful tones Beach is wonderful it's hard it's probably going to be a bit softer because it's spotted so yeah this is what we're going to work with and when you look at the piece of wood whenever you're working with a cup of wood for a teaspoon or anything we're going to think about how we're going to position the spoon given the piece of wood that we have so here because this part here it's thinner I'm thinking that we can put the ball here that will give us a little bit of space for the crank just a very little crank for a teaspoon really and we're also going to have some color in the bowl compared to the handle so that's going to be pretty as well so yeah let's let's get cracking as they say so where would you like to begin um well I'm first going to draw just just maybe even with a mental note or just a week you can also draw with a pencil where we're going to work given that there is that knot in here which it doesn't go all the way to the other side so I'm not sure how big of an issue that would be but I want to have an idea of where where am I am I going to put the ball on this side or on this side so for that we're just going to well we're going to actually do it on this side as I'm looking at the blank I'm noticing that there is a little bit of a curve in the back here so that could be part of the curve of the handle and I'm going to put the bowl in here so if I were to draw on the profile so you have a better idea the handle is going to be like this and we're going to come up with a bowl a little bit this way so I hope this pencil is easy enough to see something like this this is going to be the bowl and then I'm going to have the handle kind of curve up so that's what we're we're shooting for and this is quite a big piece of wood for a teaspoon it's quite wide we're not going to make that wide of a teaspoon but it would help to just have an idea of of the size of the teaspoon that you're going to make so probably is quite quite nice I'm going to go for around Bowl just because they're I think they're cute and then we're going to do a little bit of a round handle as well so it's fun to fiddle with as a teaspoon so yeah that's what we're going for so the first thing that I will do that the first thing that I normally do when I work on a teaspoon is just go in with a crank so usually the crank is about a third into the bowl from the handle towards the tip so this will be a third and then two thirds away from the tip of the bowl that's where the crank will be we're not going to be doing a severe crank but just enough to give it an idea and I'm going to go a little bit deeper because I want the spoon to be a bit curved here so I'm probably going to go about this deep into the spoon so we're going to technically create this angle so I'm going to take away all this wood that's above this line so that's what we're going to do first and you can do this with a saw I usually just go with it with an ax so this block is quite useful we can just rest it on the side of the block of the topping block or if you don't have this piece of wood here on your chopping block you can just tilt the wood slightly and just go and start chopping at an angle just starting where that line you marked it's right there and just work your way up and remember we want to keep we were saying that we want to keep a little bit of that curve into the handle just slightly so I'm going to keep that a bit and closer to the line not flattening this quite so we're going to take some with the with a knife when when we decide to towards the end but for now I'm just creating that gentle curve in the handle and just stopping over here at that line that we drew which will be a crank and for those curious um what ax are you using this ax is an ax by Peter Kovach solwood Creations it's I think slightly smaller than his typical ax the handle is quite recognizable it's his style it's really lovely very light very sharp very well balanced it's perfect for for anyone really who it's perfect for spoon carving if you're wanting a heavier one for both or for for anything like that get a bigger one but this is actually wonderful for for creating a spoon it's very comfortable you can ask for a long period of time with him with it with him why did I save him so it's really really nice so I'm now going a little bit flatter because I think it was a bit too curvy and I'm also checking on that knot and I think we can work around it or with it sometimes that's a good point sometimes when there is a knot in us in a blank which is great right here if there is enough room on either side I often position the bowl in a way that I get away with it and I just put the handle on one side or the other depending on how much space I have left and here because we're making a teaspoon having a bowl about this size right here will be plenty so we can actually move the bowl slightly to the to my right side and start creating the spoon over here so this will be the center of the handle right here so we can avoid this knot so that's not a problem so now that I we've created the crank now I'm going to tilt the piece of wood to take this part of wood out so basically above this line I'm going to take this all out and we're using make sure before you do that that this side is flat because we're going to put the piece of wood down and acts this way into the wood so you want this to be stable and flat we're gonna clear out the chopping board as well the chopping block and start flattening this side we're gonna end up erasing our drawing but we didn't really do that much drawing on it so so this is flat and a little bit more stable now when we start axing the crank into the spoon I'm wanting the ax to stop on The Chopping Block I don't want it to slide off of it and potentially hit my my foot or my my leg so position the piece of wood your spoon that you're working with in a way that when you are axing right on top of it you're coming into the chopping block so that's going to keep you safe and I'm basically approaching this by taking a little bit from this Edge and just working my way into a straight line from this corner to this corner so that's pretty much what I'm taking out just this this little piece of wood to create the crank of the bowl so we're going to take a little bit and I'm going to go all the way down because I want to make sure that I'm keeping a parallel line with the handle so what I'm wanting is that this surface of the wood which will be the bowl to be parallel to this to to continue into the handle this way so I don't want this to be tilted it's going to it's a good practice to start this way you can if it happens to become tilted you can adjust it later with a knife but it's a good practice to to start doing things this way from the beginning and assure yourself that you're not having to modify your design as you go along so cutting all the way down and you can see how I'm holding the ax this is my preferred way when I'm working on something that needs to be precise or on a small area of wood then I want to make sure that I'm not cutting too deep so I'm bringing my hand very close to the handle and I'm basically securing the blade that it doesn't move one way or another so that way it's almost an extension of my arm and I can direct it where I want it to go without it turning or twisting and catching onto the wood in the way that I don't want it to so we ended up cutting the crank now so we have the the crank of the bowl and we have the handle so now we just need to draw the spoon Bowl on top of the wood and we said we are going to try to avoid this knot so we're going to draw the spoon right here and this is the crank which was one third into the bowl so that means that the bowl is going to stop about here towards the handle so I'm going to push it all the way to the right as much as I can and it's a teaspoon so it's quite small they're quite fun to make you say we're going to try to do as a roundish shape just like so and the handle will start this is the middle line of the handle so I'm going to this pencil is not very very good I hope you see really well so how I'm drawing a straight line it's like it's a what they call what it's called a carpenter carpenter trick where you put your finger your index finger or your um your index finger is probably good because you're holding your pencil with these three fingers put the index finger down onto the piece of wood you're wanting to measure against and then when I want to draw a straight line I just put the pencil down and I'm basically not moving my fingers anymore and I'm just dragging the finger across the surface and as I'm pressing the pencil into the wood so that keeps the same distance from the pencil tip to my finger and just creates a straight line so that's really easy if you happen to don't have a ruler with you or I often also use the back side of my saw to do this to draw a straight line or any line really so here we have it our little teaspoon and a handle now I can split the wood all the way from the edge of the teaspoon I'm not going to use this piece so I'm going to split that off and then we're going to continue creating the spoon basically taking all the wood that's not a spoon and working our way into bringing this to to life so I could normally if I turn this this around so you can see if you're confident that your wood is a straight piece of wood you can actually go all the way from the top down however because in this case we have a knot here the wood is going to change directions around the knot and I'm not going to risk trying to split a straight piece all the way down so what I'm going to do I'm just going to start taking the wood off in this corner up to about here and then turn the spoon around and take this this piece off so we'll do that first I'm going to lean it onto one side it's easier than chopping with your ax in a in an angle so lean the piece of wood onto one side and have your ax go just up and down it's much more safe and easier to control so as I'm doing this I'm looking at the spoon drawing to make sure that I don't go over it so I just took that much of it off and now I'm going to turn it around and just take this piece off and you're gonna see me do that you're gonna see the drawing right now so I'm going to start from the bottom just creating some stop Cuts basically or just tearing into the grain and then taking those off I'm gonna do the same here just like so and now we can see that little knot it just stopped right there so it wasn't too deep but you never know when you look from the top you don't quite know how deep it goes so it's always fun to discover how how the wood really looks on the inside so the next step I'm going to try to get as close as I can to the handle using the ax so because the handle tapers out we're not going to be able to take too much this way with the ax just because the grain moves up and down well in this case it's kind of going around this knot you can even see the the grain of the wood and this in this case are the medullary rays so we're going to see how we can carve around the handle a little bit basically taking as much as I can with the ax that's what I'm aiming for because it's easier it's easier to work with the ax than it is to work with a knife sometimes you put much less effort into removing wood when you work with the ax for a spoon at least so around the handle we're pretty close now because the handle I wanted to have it round I'm going to keep this in a square so when we're going to make it into a round handle it's easier to start doing that from a square shape so having this as the thickest piece because the handle tapers out to a square to around we're going to have this the thickest piece so then I can just remove excess wood all around the spoon keeping that in mind as my reference point so now I'm going to just work on removing wood around the bowl itself from the back side and then starting to work around the edge of the bowl so we're first going to think about how thick do I want the spoon to be how deep do I want it to go and that's going to help me decide how much wood am I going to remove from the back side and we're going to do that in basically a flat surface all the way around and then we're going to create the curved part so starting from basic pretty much the crank area I can just eyeball where that is it's about here I'm going to go into a straight angle all the way down towards the tip of the spoon something like this then I can go even more this is quite deep for a teaspoon so I'll probably stop over here so I can be more comfortable taking a little bit more and there's quite a wood quite a lot of wood on the front of the spoon as well so that's something to keep in mind that actually my spoon doesn't end at the tip of this piece of wood it ends much closer than that so we can at this point go around the spoon around the edge of the spoon and the reason why I do that first is because it's much easier to remove this much thickness of the wood instead of that much if I were to go around the spoon so at this point this is quite thick here but um probably because we have a flat surface at this point I'm going to remove as much as I can from the back and come as close to the shade that I want to and we decided that this is the thickest point right so from that angle I'm going to go and taper down towards the actual Bowl like so something like that the spoon is going to be maybe about this deep and curve a little bit and the handle is going to be a little bit thinner but I'm going to adjust that with a knife so I can safely remove all the wood behind that drawing that line that we drew and I can just do that the spoon is resting on the flat surface so that that's quite safe at this point so something like this we have the bowl of the teaspoon which doesn't have to be quite deep this is plenty and then we're going to work on the handle it's going to be much thinner here and turning into a cone basically a round cone and now because we're all done with the back of the spoon and such we can easily remove the wood around the bowl itself so I'm going to start going from this point just removing this little bit and just going all the way um out into a into a pointed basically a pointed shape I'm going to just go in a straight line here a little bit and a straight line here and just gently remove that part because um it's quite at the tip your grain is going across this way so when we if we were to remove it straight across we re-risk for it to tear so I'm going to try to go really slow and maybe um use some some other ways of cutting it you can either use a saw or so I'm going to go about that much using the tip of the nut the ax holding it like I was showing you earlier this way because it's quite precise and I want it to be going exactly where I want it to go I don't want to accidentally cut too much and now I'm cutting on the other side where I don't see the drawing because I'm right on top of it so I'm I am checking quite often um to make sure that I don't go off the line so here you have this little point so right now it would be easy to just use a saw or we can basically we can use a the ax just because it's quite a small piece of wood it's quite a thin piece of wood so we can kill it it's like using a motion just like you would with the guillotine not that you have a guillotine to use but just chopping this way just resting starting with the wood with the ax right on the tip and just pressing down it's like those knives that you use to cut herbs with that are this way and that's why this ax is quite lovely because of the shape of it it's curved with um with a straight knife it would still work but um this allows you to to have this rocking motion and it's really nice to to use for particularly these kinds of cuts so we have gone around the bowl now I'm going to try to remove some of the wood here we're just going to go gently around the bowl just like so I'm using the tip of the ax at this point um and leaning the piece of wood onto the edge of the board chopping board popping block so I'm going a bit farther away about a couple of millimeters three four three millimeters away from the bowl from the um from the bowl and from the handle so just to be safe and because I'm using an ax and it's not always it is a quite a small shape that I'm creating a small piece of wood so I'm wanting to avoid accidentally hitting in the wrong place so I'm giving myself some some space by staying away a few extra millimeters from the actual drawing that I have so I'm doing that on the other side as well what this is it's exactly what you would do with a stop cut with an uh with a saw it's just another way that you can get close to the handle by not if you don't have a saw with you um so you can just work on your spoon using an ax and get just the same results so like so you can see that here I just got really really close to the line quite on the line and that's fine I'm just going to continue all the way to that point that I created so now because these are technically stop Cuts I can go up from the handle alongside the handle up to that edge very gently trying to remove this piece of wood right here all everything that's above this point towards the handle just that so we're going to gently go down the wood not hitting too hard for one because your spoon is resting right on the tip on The Chopping Block so you don't want to damage this tip it's quite thick but sometimes it can be a little bit more frail so we're going to do the same thing on the other side just gently removing some of the wood that's going along the side and here when you get close to the Bowl just be super gentle you don't want to hit into the bowl because that will create a fracture it'll start cracking when it dries so if you if you can you can also use the bump cuts which are something like this where you position the acts into the wood and then the gravity will just slowly take it down towards the bowl without you having to hit and you can control it a little bit more that way it's a much more gentle cut so there we have it this is the this is going to be much thinner here and just tapering out into a round half handle and that's it we're going to go into the knife work next okay so we are now inside where it's warm and toasty and we're going to start the knife work for this teaspoon so this is the blank we just did and the first thing that I do when I work on a spoon I go around the outside profile and make sure that that is where I want it to be and it's close to the line and it's the final shape of the the spoon so I don't have to modify that anymore and it creates a reference point because after we do the side profile we're going to start working on the top profile and we will have a point of reference pretty much having a shape that we are going to follow so let's do that I'm going to tell you a little bit about all the holes that I'm using this is a little bit trickier when you work with us with a small shape it's um you have to hold it quite close to you and it doesn't give you that much room to play because you don't have a big piece of wood to hold on to so we will most likely do a lot of bracing it and working towards ourselves and fiddling with it pretty much all throughout so I'm going to start working around the shape around the the drawing that we we did and in this case as you see in the drawing so we're not going to have a tapered handle here we're going to go straight into the bowl at 90 degrees which is quite easy to do um it's much easier than having to create that curve into the tight Corners that's a something that a lot of people struggle with so we're going to avoid that and make it easy for ourselves here and if people are curious what knife are you using yeah this is also by Peter Peter Kovach is a wonderful knife it's a regular size Lloyd I think it's a night of 80 80 millimeters blade and I quite like it it also has a round bevel I'm sorry around back around the spine it's just something that I use to burnish my spoons with actually the handles and so forth and it's quite thin at the tip the um blade it stays sharp quite well and quite a long time which I I prefer and the handle is very comfortable so yeah it's a wonderful knife I highly recommend it I've been using it while I traveled all these last few months that's pretty much the only knife that I've had with me and the chip carving knife which is also by him and I didn't miss any of my other tools so that's what we're going to use today so I'm coming at a 90 degrees here just going around the shape and slowly keeping in mind the grain orientation so from the highest point of viewer to keep this on the in a profile from the highest point down and again from the highest point down because this slightly tapers and from the highest point down this way as well and for this particular cut I am doing a thumb push you can also on this other side we're going to you can also use this but we're gonna get there as well so for now I'm just working around the drawing that we did trying to stay symmetrical so I'm checking sometimes when we draw a spoon um we see it from One Direction so from I drew it this way but if I were to turn it around you and I might see that it's not quite symmetrical in the bowl so make sure that you look at your spoon from all directions just sometimes your your eyes can play a trick on you and especially if you're making a symmetrical spoon and also allow yourself room to be playful and make something else if you make a mistake and it doesn't look quite right it can always turn into an asymmetrical spoon and nobody so there we have it we have just about this much I might take a little bit more at the tip because I wanted it to be a little bit more round so that way it's going to make it a bit more round at the tip like so now I'm going to turn it around and work on this Edge and even immediately as I turned it upside down I can see that this particular corner I need to do or Corner this particular side I need to take some off because it it doesn't it's not symmetrical to the other side just that simple turning the spoon around allowed me to to do that to see that for this cut I'm going to kind of go over the cuts that I'm using just to to offer that as well in this video so I am holding the knife at the base of my fingers and wrapping my fingers around so that allows me to pull the knife towards me with my fist the thumb is out of the way this is the same like peeling potatoes but when we peel potatoes we usually on the knife the kitchen knives are not very sharp so we sort of stop in our or I do stop in our thumb but you don't want to do that because this knife is quite sharp so move your finger out of the way still use it as a anchoring point and bring your fist your clothes in your fist as you cut and just take a little bit at the time it's going to feel awkward at the beginning it did for me because I'm used to that motion where I want the thumb to be under like right in front but you'll get used to it so just keep practicing it that's one way of course you can also do this thumb push cut which is probably one of the cuts that I've used the most and it can be really comfortable here because we you can actually find ways to hold onto the spoon to you pretty much do the whole spoon with the push cut your thumb push if you want but here you can also um what other no just about this one I guess for this particular angle so I'm just keep checking you're gonna just see me check quite a lot for symmetry and turning it around and it helps that my pants are dark you want to look at either a dark surface with no colors for destruction or against the sky because it's a really bright kind of a white canvas so is that an excuse to go shopping that's an excuse to go shopping for black tights absolutely a must-have for all spoon Carvers so we are getting really close to finishing the ball just the side profile of the bowl it smells smells so good it smells like this is a piece of wood that it's actually from Romania and I left it to spald I didn't I forgot it to spot I forgot it on the ground when I went traveling in London and over England and Israel and so forth and it got covered with leaves and right now I'm not sure if there were Walnut leaves that were all around but it smells like the walnuts I don't know if you know that just smells like my childhood like green walnuts it's it smells like fall it's just always wonderful so I always get um nostalgic when I when I smell this it's it's almost smells just like the turn of the seasons now we're we're done we went a little bit on this side just from here down we went all around the bowl now we're gonna go up this side and for here I'm going to use the thumb push the only thing is that I don't I'm not able to see if I'm staying close to the line or not so I'm not going to be too adventurous and and keep cutting I'm going to check every few Cuts just to make sure that I'm staying close to the line and the reason why that's important for this particular spoon is because we're making a round handle and for a round handle you want to have a square piece of wood a square handle that we're going to turn into around so I want to make sure that I don't go too thin on one side or the other that will pretty much throw off our shape so I'm trying to be um precise in that way just to secure that the shape that I want to create is there in the end so keep going around the edges so pretty much we have the whole shape up to about here now we're going to work on this side and because the wood here tapers out the grain is going down in a straight line like this so for these if this knife is the grain of the wood if I were to cut up into it this way it's going to tear it's just going to break so I need to come down from the tip down so that's going to be requiring us to use this cut where you braise the spoon in between your chest and your fingers these particular two fingers and then that's going to allow these fingers to push the blade towards you in a safe way so figure out I mean you have quite a area here to work so if you need to keep it close to you or if you need to bring it down if you can also bring it into your stomach here it also depends on your eyesight and also the the comfortable space that you you feel comfortable working in I'm not pushing I'm not pushing towards myself with this knife with this hand at all it's just holding it steady my wrist is quite firm all the effort is happening from these three fingers so basically if I were to hold this knife this way that's all I'm doing I'm not bringing this towards me and that's going to secure that I don't accidentally stab myself basically because the wood is quite hard and it might slip at any point so you don't want to to create any injuries so this is one of the hardest cuts it was really hard for me to learn this but it's so so incredibly useful so here's some I'm gonna just clean up a little bit right and then show you this Edge so we did this Edge it's slowly tapering towards the handle we're going to do the same onto here and you can see there is a little bit of wood right outside of this line that we drew so we're just going to clean that up and create a clean line all the way down same motion same cut thing taking a little bit at the time you don't want it you don't want necessarily to be bold and take a whole lot just take a little bit it's safer and easier and it's also easier on your chest bone it's quite a sensitive area I used to carve right on my on my sternum right on my diaphragm and eventually just because I was tensing it to brace against the cut it eventually became quite tense and I had like it just created a little bit like breathing problems and it's just something that I guess as as we carve and we get excited and focused you just don't pay attention about these things so be mindful of of the muscles that you're using and make sure you rest and all those things I think Dan made a really wonderful video about then it said with with stretching and so forth also my channel yes yes highly recommend you watch that Okay so we have the two sides tapering out we're gonna need to do the back and when you look at here it's still a square and that's what we want we want it to be a square now from the profile this is the thickest part that we wanted to use and this we want it to be the thinner part so I'm going to come a little bit more in a straight line here tapering from this point all the way down here so we're going to work on the back side and on the front side right now because the profile of the spoon is all done so same cut same hold we're going to come from the top and I took a little bit too much here so I'm just going in front of it and cleaning it up because it just for a second it didn't quite feel safe to go so much wood all at once and that's something you will it will just become familiar with as you're as you're working on on the spoons you make you'll just know that oh that's a bit too much a bit too much of the second so as you can see I'm going on in a straight line and I want to go all the way down here and now because I have quite a bit of wood to hold on to I can switch to the thumb push and the reason why that is is because I was getting really close to here and it just didn't feel quite safe so now I can just adjust and I'm checking to make sure I'm staying in a straight line and gosh I wish you could smell this it just smells so good so there we go it's quite a straight line a little bit wobbly but it doesn't quite matter I'm being a bit finicky at this point and now we're going to do the same thing straight like this but basically following this line when we're going to come up to about there and that's the back of the screw that's going to be the back of the spoon yes and usually when you make a spoon the it requires quite a lot of material here especially if you're going thin onto the sides you want it to be thicker here but this is a teaspoon and you're not going to really Hammer this with so it can be a little bit more delicate and we're going to make it in a way that it's actually still it still holds and has quite a lot of wood in the back but it's not going to be your classic um thicker here and just tapering down towards the handle it's going to be quite round and kind of a round handle that just kind of pops out of the bowl so we're gonna we're gonna try to give that a go see how it looks we're going to go in the same direction here if the wood lets us and that's where you can adjust and see oh maybe it doesn't want to go that direction it didn't feel like it but it actually it's okay so same exact cut and hold the way until it feels safe to do so you know in a flat surface keeping that square ish shape and product from the profile you can see that I'm slowly coming closer and thinner towards the bowl I'm going to stop about here and switch to the other cut for more comfort and more control and I'm checking and I'm still checking and the reason why I'm gonna I want to do this is this particular shape is well one is fun it's a little bit more different and I'm just checking to see that the surfaces are um flat just to make sure that I'm staying in the way that I wanted to and here I'm going to stop just as as such because I want to work on the bowl first and see how that looks on the back so that's what we have just adjusting little angles that I see from different just looking at it from all angles and from the profile and I want to make sure that it looks good and how I want it to be okay so we did the handle that's how the handle is going to look is it turning into a cutie and now I'm going to work on the I'm actually going to do the edge of the bowl which is just the profile of the side of the bowl and I'm going to turn my knife I just want to what I'm doing now I'm just working onto this curve right now you can see that it's just a flat surface and a flat surface quite a sharp angle and meeting in the crank and I want to create that curve um that's going to be the profile of the bowl and this is tricky to do with a teaspoon just because it's a tiny little shape but I'm basically right now when we asked this was quite flat it was a flat surface so instead of keeping it flat what I'm going to do I'm just going to create a little bit of a curve moving my knife this way if the wood allows you you can do the whole thing from the top creating a little bit of a curve all the way to the a handle we'll see if that happens if that if that's what allows us and what I'm doing I'm literally just cutting as you can see just the edge I'm not cutting the whole surface I'm just cutting the edge of the spoon going around the rim and establishing the rim of the spoon and I'm trying to create a continuous line in a curve all around the rim so when you look at it now it's more of a curve whereas on this side it's more of a straight angle so that's what we're going to try to mirror on the other side which is always the hard part and the way I do that the way I mirror a curve that we created on the other side is looking at it just this way as you're looking at it from this direction down so right now you can see that there is a little bit of a curve down this plane went down into the spoon so when I'm going to work on this side I'm going to look at it this way just as you are now making sure that I go the same depth as I went on this side so I'm going to take a little bit and then I'm going to check looking at it this way and making sure that I'm going to go as deep as I want on the other side and the left side is also the hardest part I'm right-handed and we can work at it this way that's one way or you can hold it like this in between your fingers if it usually if it's a bigger spoon you can but I won't be able to do that here because I'm really close to my fingers but that's another way if the spoon was bigger that was another way that you can work on this side but here I'm not going to risk that so I'm going to cut this way so again I'm cutting just the edge and you can see just kind of going around just cutting the edge creating that curve and I'm going to check to see and what I'm doing I'm literally just Closing one eye and focusing on the point of the spoon and trying to see compared to this plane and compare the two the two levels the two surfaces if they are at the same depth if they're matching for symmetry so I need to take a go a little bit lower a little bit deeper into the bowl and I really want to try this way as well because I'm kind of wanting it to oh there we go and wanting to create this curve a little bit better just like so so we created now that curve similar to the sides to the other side and I'm going to check and it does look like it wants to go it would benefit to go a little bit deeper it would be a bit more a bit more symmetrical that way just like so and this is where the grain changes a little bit right here into the crank so I'm going to try to go the other way around as well just to make sure I don't have any transition here that breaks and there are no fibers that break I don't mind if there's some in here but as long as the edge is fine just that three millimeter four minutes four millimeters that's what I'm looking for I'm gonna check again and now this side is a little bit taller it's a little bit lower than this side so I'm just going to adjust a little bit over here and the reason why I do this now is because I want that profile of the spoon just the rim of it I want it to be the final shape so when I start scooping I don't have to bother with the edge I won't have to clean that edge other people carve it differently and maybe you do as well where you carve the spoon first and then you adjust the rim that's totally fine as well there's no one way to do a spoon so now you get to see my method a little bit or my rhythm um so there we have it we have the profile on both on on the handle on all sides we have the rim now I'm going to work on the back of the bowl and the reason why I do the back of the bowl first is because I am very tactile when I feel the ball and I know how deep I want to go into the into the bowl so I am wanting the surface to be finished so I can use that as my reference and feel my way around and that's why we're doing the bowl first there's no no rule about that at either so I'm rounding this up and just keep looking on the profile because I want to see how the Curve of the whole shape flows so I'm looking on the profile just to see does that look good is that what I'm wanting it to look like at least at um I'm looking at this line right here the back line and how does that flow and if that's if I'm happy with that then I'll continue but if I want this to be different I now have quite a bit of material to adjust this curve so for now I'm happy with it and I'm gonna I'm gonna keep working here you can also use the chest lever I think it's called just School where you're pulling your arms apart with the back muscles of your shoulder blades the or the the muscles of between your shoulder blades really and that's you're not really pushing with your elbows it's a really powerful cut for removing a lot of material all at once so I'm working on the tip of the spoon at the moment as you can see and from there I'm going to leave some belly here but start rounding this end and keep that Rim all the way around and that's going to look this is a little bit more finicky to work with when you are working on a teaspoon because there's hardly any wood to hold into the bowl so we have to be quite careful and slow when we do this so I'm just rounding this area here now and I'm going to leave as much here to start making this a round shape so this is where that round handle is going to just pop out of the bowl that's how we were that's what I envisioned when I decided to make this shape when when we started doing this at the beginning and that's something that of course you can adjust and change your mind about the design at any point really so I'm just kind of going in back and forth in between different cuts depending on what direction I'm working on to the wood and what how much would I have to hold on to and all of that just it it at some point it just sort of becomes second hand and it just automatically um something that your your body goes towards but when you're just starting you can practice one movement and get really good at it and then introduce another one that's really a good way to to start practicing different ways of cutting so now I'm continuing that rim all the way around towards the handle and I'm also checking at this point to make sure that that the back of the bowl is symmetrical with the other side that I finished and I'm just using my thumb and also checking to make sure that the rim is is the same thickness as the other side so this part here from from this half down looks pretty good to me on both sides and I'm going to just take this corner and then we're going to round we're going to round the the handle so yeah this is where I have to sort of improvise What What In what way am I going to hold it because it's quite tiny and finicky I just happen to have smaller hands so that's easier to work for me and if you have bigger hands you will just have to find your way through and adjust so from the profile now you're kind of getting an idea we have the teaspoon and the handle how that's going to how that's going to look I'm going to take a little bit more from the thickness of the bowl so here's when I'm trying to secure it in between my thumb this part of my thumb and my my index finger and while pushing with this part of my thumb it's just all these different ways that that you're you learn eventually to just work with a piece of wood that you have and it's it's interesting because spoon carving really creates a sort of dexterity to some degree from working with different shapes and okay so I'm coming now right into the handle oops and looking at the profile I'm wanting maybe I'll take a little bit more from right at the belly and again I'm doing this keeping in mind that I want to just sort of be done with the hand with the back of the bowl when I'm when I'm finished with when I'm finished with this step the back of the bowl is going to be as close to the final shape as possible you can modify it a little bit more but that's going to dictate how the inside of the bowl is going to look for me so that's the bowl right now the back of the bowl so we're going to work on the handle and then we're going to start carving the inside okay so the next step we're going to now that the back of the bowl is done we're going to work on rounding the handle so we have a squarish shape and if I take a little bit some of the edges off it will you will see that it's quite quite a square so to create a to create a round shape we're basically going to take the corners off create an octagon and then we're going to take those Corners that we create all those eight corners and take those in and we're gently working ourselves into a round shape it's worth maybe pointing out that if people haven't seen we've done a chopstick video where you taught how to cut off Chopsticks so essentially the same principles outlined in that video exactly is what you're going to be doing here so yes absolutely give that a go give that a look give that a try it's really fun to to create round handles it there's so much practice in creating facets as well you practice creating a straight surface there are just so many ways that so many ways that that it's helpful for your for your craft so I'm just taking the facet off I can go quite bold with this and I'm basically trying to create equal facets about this distance here here on all four corners and that's why it's helpful to have a square because you don't have to adjust the thickness and just kind of lands you at the end of it into a perfect round just like so so we have two of them and we're going to do the same on the other side and because here it's sometimes and often it's going the other direction the grain is going from here up you can you can adjust for that bit it seems like we're fine going this direction on on this side as well and the same so we have one two three we're gonna do another one here so how I do that I just position the knife just the way that I want it to cut and I'm from the beginning establishing the angle of the facet you're now basically creating facets so if you want to create a faceted spoon at some point the faceted handle this is how you would go about it and you know doing that all the way around and adjusting I'm also feeling with my hand to make sure that there are no bumps and that's that's it for you right there so now we have an octagon well-ish it's a little bit more squished of an octagon which is fine we can we can adjust that to make to make it more of a round when we start taking those corners so we started with four corners because it was a square now we have eight corners and to start creating the round shape we're basically going to take those Corners down just the way we we did the facets so and slowly adjusting a little bit I want to go all the way down towards the handle just to see the hole shape I just want to make sure I have the full visual on some of the sides we took a little bit more but that can be easily adjusted so just like so we have now an octagon which means there are eight facets so all these these eight Corners that we've created we're going to mellow those down and just start taking those down just like so so we're going to position our knife and just take those Corners off and it doesn't have to be in a straight line at this point you can literally just start taking Corners off and create a transition right now between this facet and this fat facet is just this one line of a transition so what we're wanting to do is eliminate that and start creating a round transition between these these two points and we're going to do that all the way around and that is how you create a round handle just go all the way down the same here just like so just like so and it just kind of go all the way around and now you can see that right here we have a round surface foreign just like so in some of the areas you will have to go again just because there might be a bit bumpier but and that's how we arrive at our final shape something like this where it can be a little bit thinner and we can absolutely make it a little bit thinner here by being a little bit more aggressive in our in our cuts and at this point your you can go a little bit more aggressive you can take bigger bigger slices bigger shavings and you can afford that because the overall shape is the shape that you wanted so you're not going to Veer off too much if you go bold just just keeps the same pressure all the way down something like that and The Next Step will be to just do the the bowl and where we have a teaspoon like that and here we can adjust the handle and the bow interface with all these pretty curlies just like soft okay so like this here's our teaspoon which is fun to kind of play with I love round handles and now we're going to just carve the the bowl and of course you can adjust and make that make it thinner if you want to but I'm gonna just leave it at that for for time purposes and for a teaspoon I'm going to use a scorp this is a tiny scorp from Lee um least offer he makes wonderful wonderful scorps probably know about about them um I particularly like this because it's wonderful for for Scoops as well and all sorts of of things like small yeah small scoops and small teaspoons and even regular spoons it's wonderful for that as well and just adjusting a little bit of a of a rim that I saw here not quite even like so all right let's let's do them all so this is a teaspoon it's going to be a little bit harder to carve because it's so small so what I normally do I just imagine the rim how thick do I want the rim to be we cut it around but it's quite it's just the flat surface at the moment like more of an inclined surface all the way around but I'm going to decide how thick of a rim do I want around and how I do that I just place the tool just at the at a certain thickness at this certain distance from The Edge to the inside of the bowl and I think well is that is that digested evaluate is that how do I like the look of that do I want it to be thinner and I do like the look of that um that thickness all around this is where you play with design and I like that thickness because to handle it's a little bit thicker so that feels to me like it's balancing well and I'm going to keep that all the way around you can easily draw a line at that thickness all the way around if that's easier or you can just work your way like I'm going to do now just work my way on the edge of the bowl kind of trying to keep that same that same thickness of a rim I think it's also important to stress that people use whatever hook knife they have yes it's absolutely yeah if I actually have a wood tools hook that has um a bit of a the compound hook has the top of it the end of it is quite quite hook quite a hook so you can definitely use that I just happen to have this um as a as an option but any hook would work and with the teaspoon it's wonderful because you don't need to go that deep into the bowl so a flat a flat hook works just as well you will just have to work with a certain with a certain part of the hook that will um prevent the rest of it to catch onto the spoon so that's just one thing to keep in mind so I have a mental note at this point how thick that Rim is so I am I'm just drawing that basically all around all around the edge and as you can see I'm not scooping anything from the middle at the moment I'm just focusing on the rim and if I if the spoon was bigger I would start scooping a little bit out of the bowl just because um it's a little bit easier to work not having a lot of material to work with and a lot of material in my way so not gonna bother doing the finish of the inside but I'm just taking some of the material out so I'm keeping the same thickness all the way around trying to embrace the spoon in between my fingers and what's fun about this Hook is that you can work in the opposite direction as well and you can absolutely do that with a regular hook having a lefty one and a right one or just positioning the spoon in a way that allows you to work the left side and the right side so him gently staying with that rim by putting the knife at the distance that I want it to be and working my way around and I'm taking just a little bit at the time because I don't want to damage that Rim I don't want to take too much and now all of a sudden I have quite a thin Rim that I have to modify all the way around so that's why drawing on the spoon can be really helpful and I'm gonna dig a little bit more in the back here just like so and then at this point I'm feeling with my fingers just to make sure that I'm feeling like I'm getting closer to the final thickness on this side and I just need to work now on this bit of wood here and I'm bracing it again up against my chest just like I was doing when I was it's exactly the same motion except that now I'm rotating my wrist because I'm my intention is to scoop so with the knife we were going straight down my wrist was locked with this I'm wanting to scoop so I'm scooping as I'm pressing the tool towards me just like so taking a little bit of the time I don't want to dig too much I'm not pressing too hard because I don't want to rip through the bowl so this is where you just learn how to just practicing just get to know your tool and the wood that you're working with and here I'm going to try to take some of it right across the grain just like so making sure that I don't disturb and I don't cut into this area with the back of my blade just like so just scooping out the inside and we're almost done with it and teaspoons are just so lovely a lot of a lot of people myself included have I really like small delicate things I mean when you see a tiny little spoon it just makes you smile so they're fun to make I highly recommend you try making one I'm going to go a little bit deeper as well here because I already did on the other side and try to mirror that on this end and in the area where the crank was is where the direction of the grain changes so that's where you have to be a little bit more careful and we're going to take the center part out just like so this makes such a wonderful teaspoon for coffee or for sugar or spices anything like that they're really fun to make [Music] okay we are done I would maybe take a little bit more in the bowl just a little bit more to have a better transition in that curve usually a spoon when you make a spoon like an eating spoon you would want it to be a bit more flat at the first two-thirds from the tip towards the handle it just feels better in the hand in the mouth but a teaspoon is just a teaspoon and you're gonna just stir things with and maybe eat delicious desserts with but there we have it we're just going to adjust the now looking at it just a little bit of a design thing I would go a bit thinner here maybe keeping this thickness but I would go a little bit thinner here if perhaps we can definitely try that really quickly just because the bowl is so thin it bears a bit more of a delicate shape thin I mean little the bowl is so little a delicate shape handle would suit it better so I'm just quickly taking some of this Belly of the handle this is where you kind of play with the design of a spoon you can always adjust like I was saying earlier you have something in mind and then when you see it done you can adjust and given that you're you're leaving enough wood to do so so now that we have the spoon done we just need to do the rim here at the edge just because this is quite a sharp angle and here's where you can I'm just going to flatten this area and base I'm slightly slicing not so much cutting across just because I don't want the grain to tear on the opposite side especially because this is spotted wood so some of the areas where it's more sappy like here it can be a little bit more granular so I am right now going to just take the edge of It Off by cutting a little at an angle all the way across and that's going to make it more comfortable to use I don't know might have a better look you can absolutely leave it sharp as well if you want but there we have it it's a little little teaspoon you can paint the handle if you want or just leave it like that but there it is so a couple of questions to wrap up the process so at this point obviously we're going to dry it so what is your personal drying process for a teaspoon like this yeah it's quite a thin piece of wood so if you're a little bit slower in making it by the time you're done it's probably just from the heat of your hand going to be half dry so like any other piece of wood because this is really thin if it's really hot in your place or where you are just all these shavings just put it with all these shaving shavings in a open paper bag or plastic bag it doesn't really matter and I mean these ones just as I'm touching them right now they're absolutely dry so by the evening this is going to be a dry spoon if if it's not terribly hot in your place right now most most places it's it's cold in the winter right now so I would just leave it on the table it should be fine um if you have any if by mistake you've had some Nicks or something I would recommend to put it with the shavings and let it dry quite slowly if you're confident that you don't have any any tears or anything then it's absolutely fine to leave it to leave it like this and the next thing after it's dry you can oil it you can use walnut oil linseed oil linseed is quite yellow so it might change the color of the wood so I recommend walnut oil or a mixture of tongue oil and um some sort of solvent but walnut oil is the easiest one it polymerizes wonderfully and a little bit slower but it's fine you can just after it's dry and you oil it then you can put it on your heater or somewhere where it's hot and it will create that wonderful film around the spoon that will protect it from stains and from from where in the last a long time that's it you can also bake it if you want to a lot of people bake their spoons I haven't baked a spoon in a very long time but something that is belted like this it's not maybe worth baking but if you have a wood piece of wood that it's a little bit more on the Bland side and you want to have some grain pop you can bake it and it'll be really nice and wonderful that's it you have a teaspoon and so the final question is yeah what tea would you recommend to test it out with definitely with biscuits we had a long talk about this kid um oh gosh English tea the black yes black tea what is it the builders tea Builder said yes it's very milky usually two tea bags so but yeah any tea just some honey you can even use it for honey you can use it for for green tea to take the tea out with I mean so many uses for this little thing and it's I mean look at it it's just so darn cute little cute cute little things teaspoons make some definitely make some and let me know what shape you're gonna make if you're gonna make some that's it so there you have it my friends that is a wrap for this video the teaspoon cream Andrea thank you that's your new name now thank you so much that was really really awesome to see for myself as well um it's fun to make yeah that was really really cool we just realized actually part way through filming it's the first time I've covered a teaspoon tutorial on the channel I've done a pocket spoon with Deborah schneidery Morel whose Studio we're actually filming out so a huge thanks to her um the first video I've ever saw that was it ironic yeah come back full circle so there you know thank you so much once again it was a real world trade to see it as well as to document for people to learn yeah at home so guys to wrap up this video a few things number one as mentioned at the very beginning this is part of a broader series I have been filming with Andrea on this visit and a previous visit down highly recommend you go check those videos out links to those will be in the description also as I mentioned at the very beginning Andrea has very kindly created a downloadable PDF template to follow the same teaspoon that she's caught in this video and it's completely free for you to download so that template alongside with this video will be a fantastic companion for you to have a go yourself to access that I'll put a link below in the description as well as pinned to the top of the comments also as I mentioned at the very beginning of this video this video has been time stamped as you've seen by the end of this video it has been very detailed with every kind of process elaborated on so like I said a timestamp you can look along the bottom of this video as well as in the below description and finally it would mean the world to me if you gain any value from this video whatsoever I asked one thing from you is that to go and check out Andrea on Instagram lit will be below in the description and to give her a follow following from that one thing I will add is if you do carve a teaspoon using Android's templates and this video which we highly recommend you do it will mean the world to me and Andrea if you tackle yes please do on Instagram zillion kinds of teaspoons so be playful let me know what you're making that would be really fun to see yeah yeah and so yeah give her a tag on the Instagram and when you go to the website to download the Templar I'd encourage you to have a look around Andrea produces a fantastic array of utensils and wears and wooden wear she's getting quite prolific now within the screen woodworking Community not just here in the UK but across Europe and other countries as well she also is teaching now she'll be a lot of the events uh at the time of filming this in 2023 in the UK but regardless of when you're watching this if you go to a website you can see the absolute plethora of things that she gets up to and also on her Instagram you can see the back catalog of things that she gets up to on her travels and everything else that she's doing as well as when she's back in a native Romania yeah fighting or vampires with pointy teaspoons see Chopsticks and a necklace of garlic that's what it is so guys really do appreciate you watching up until the end if you have watched this video in its entirety and what's going to sincere thank you to you Andrea yeah for allowing me to document your process and guys thanks for watching it yeah that's it you're about to do mine are you about to do my outro for me off my heart so guys that is a wrap for this video once again really do appreciate you watching and once again links to everything down below if you have any questions or queries Instagram is a way to go to hit Andrea up and I shall see you on the next installment until then I hope whatever you're doing you have a blessed day a blessed week ahead for myself that outdoors and Andrew and grad peace out over there

Channel: Zed Outdoors

Views: 4,239

Keywords: wood carving, wood carving art, wood carving for beginners, how to, spoon making

Id: YsUIs7pJ9EQ

Length: 97min 29sec (5849 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2023