How to Carve a Wooden Spoon by Hand

[Music] so we are going to get into some proper wood carving today what we're going to be doing is carving a spoon similar to one of these right here these are both made out of walnut we're going to be carving walnut today but before we get into any of that i should say if you have any questions about the tools that you see throughout this whole video go ahead and leave those questions down in the comments and if you're interested in the work such as the spoon we're carbon you can check out our etsy shop we're going to post a link to that in the description so go ahead and check that out as well anyways back to uh the spoon here these are both carved out of walnut there's a bunch of different woods you can use too much to explain right now the best way to explain it is to go ahead and jump right into it so let's go ahead and do that all right so the wood that we are going to be selecting a piece from today is walnut that's what we have these logs we got here so you don't have to use walnut wallet's a good piece it makes a good product but you can use cherry or some sycamore sassafras or maple earth you know there's quite a few good words but today we're going to be using walnut because that's what we have now when you're carving anything by hand what you're trying to find as far as selecting a piece of wood goes is you want to find a straight grain piece with no knots of any kind the knots will give you a really cool grain structure but they'll also make your finished product really weak and it will make it really really challenging to carve whatever it is you're trying to carve the entire time so to avoid knots you'll be way more successful in doing that so you can see on this particular piece of wood we have here there's a big burl right here and there's a big knot right here so we're going to cut that off and get back to where we can find a nice clear piece now another thing i should mention is i see on youtube in different spoon carving videos that people will be carving spoons out of like dried two by fours or something like that and that is pretty much exactly what you don't want to do when when you go to carve a spoon or hand carve anything you want to start with green wood green wood carves way easier which gives you a huge advantage and when you're carving by hand you need all the advantage that you can get it's going to be hard enough as it is so selecting a piece of green wood is where you want to start the green wood ensures that you don't have any checks or anything like that when you start that the dry wood already had time to like unstabilize and they're likely to be checks in the end and so you'll get halfway through your project and just to find that you have checks and that's incredibly disappointing so starting with greenwood you're going to be way more successful so let's go ahead and cut the end of this off and see if we can't get us a clear piece and split into it and see what we can find [Applause] so how we're going to get our spoon blank out of this piece of wood is we're going to split it that's going to be the most effective way and take a closer look up here this is this is pretty important you have the center of the tree the center of the tree has these wind marks has these uh checks and they're always in every piece of wood so you don't ever want to leave the center of the piece of wood in anything you're carving ever you want to get rid of that so we're going to split from here over and select our blank out of this side so you can see we have that that good check already formed we're going to start by using that as our direction to start our score and that will help us become more successful gaining control and getting this to split off really easy so you want to start right there just follow that wind mark and bust the side off so i'm going to score it right along here to encourage the split to happen right where we want it to so that way we can maximize the amount of spoon blanks that we get out of this one piece because we want to get as many as we can so you can see that split exactly where we wanted it okay so now we have our possible spoon blanks here that we selected from that log let's let's take a close look at them so you can see what we're actually looking for in a spoon blank this right here you can see that squirrely grain right there and you can see some bumps right there where some knots this is going to haunt you the entire time this piece of wood is no good that is firewood so now we're down to two this one right here has some squirrely grain yeah it straightens up back here a little bit and you could get the bowl down here this is you can carve this i'm going to save this for later to carve now this piece right here is the best one out of all of them we have the pith from the center of the tree but we'll go ahead and cut that off so this is the one we're going to select and the reason why we selected it is clear because you can see that's nice and straight and this is going to haunt us the whole time so this will be a much more successful piece of wood to carve so we're going to start with this one so now that we have our spoon blank selected to start carving the spoon you have to draw the spoon out and it's going to be too hard to draw on this because it's all gnarly because we just split it and there's still some splinters and stuff left on here and some sap wooden bark so we're going to true this up and we're going to make it nice and flat on all sides so we get rid of all like checks and splinters and we're just down to a solid piece of wood that we know we can count on so let's go ahead and true this up now you can see i make these scores right here that enables all of this wood to come off there a lot easier if you just start from the top and come down your hatch will just get stuck every time and it just takes too much energy to get nowhere so if you make those nice scores you're more successful you'll notice throughout this whole video we're going to approach it the same way every time by making those nice scores so when you're true enough your piece of wood you don't have to spend all day long making it exactly perfect that would be a waste of time but you do need to do a good enough job to where you can draw on it reasonably effectively without having to go over like bumps and splits and you need to get back down to nothing but clear solid wood so you know what you actually have to work with and you'll notice here that there's no propeller twist so one end of the board is not like this and one is not like that it's pretty much straight all the way through because we got rid of the propeller twist so we know what we actually have so that's what you're trying to do is just clean it up so you can draw a picture on it so before you go to draw anything on your blank make sure to look it over thoroughly and uh assess both ends and that will help you make the decision of which way you want to put your spoon on it bowl down here versus bowl up here now this particular piece i looked it over and i decided to put the bowl down here and the handle up here because up on this end there's that from the center of the tree that that that check there's still a little bit of it over here but that's going to be beside the handle so it won't affect us negatively but if we were to put the bowl on this end of the spoon that would be right across the edge of our bowl that would be a disaster so we're going to put the handle here and the bowl down here another reason why we chose to do this is because the blank is wider at this end that's going to give us a bigger bowl which will make the spoon capable of more and bring more value so that's why we selected that and let's go ahead and draw it on here before i start drawing on here i am going to kind of bring you up to speed with what's going on it'll help you track along better you won't be sailing so blind so to speak so here we go you have a few basic differences in spoons i'm going to use these two right here as an example you'll notice this handle right here starts out small and tapers continuously to slightly larger towards the end where this one starts out small and tapers up to larger right here then tapers back into smaller that's one of the differences here this one has a round bowl and this one here has an egg shaped bowl so today the spoon we're going to be carving is going to have a round bowl because i think with this big blank right here it's going to make most sense and best be used for this and it is going to have a handle that tapers like this so it's going to look very similar to this and so now that you know this is kind of what we're going for a slightly larger version of this as we're explaining things and laying it out you can kind of brace yourself to see this actually coming out of the wood so let's go ahead and lay it out another thing here about layout so when when you're building anything in the world doesn't matter what it is you're better off to start with an idea of what you want it to look like when you're done if you don't quite have that worked out you're not going to be very effective with your energy delivery your energy delivery is always going to be like not sure am i going too far is this right i don't really know so if you start with an idea of what you really want and you lay it out exactly like geometrically specific perfect then you can just direct your energy right to that line every time and you'll be way more successful so let's go ahead and start with a real perfect layout that we can go directly to as opposed to imagining what we possibly might want it to look like someday so when you are laying out whatever it is you're going to lay out you're always best to start from center that way both sides of whatever it is you're building looks the same so we have walnut and we're going to mark with a black pencil and that's going to be really challenging for you to see so i apologize for that but uh so we're going to start by putting the handle on here so we start by making us a center line i'll try to make these real dark so you can see them a half inch off to either side of the center and you know we're just so far back from the end of the spoon because our handle is going to taper up wide and then taper in again so you can put that wherever you want to in this location that is up to you so now we're going to go back down here to where the bowl end of the spoon is and again we're going to start with a center line and then a quarter inch off to either side and we are going to make these lines here nice and dark as possible so hopefully you'll be able to see them on the video the center line is your control line this is an important line make this one really dark because you're going to use it quite a few times all right so that is both sides of the handle hopefully you can see that and now we're going to the other end of the handle a quarter inch off to either side of the line you don't have to follow a quarter inch or half inch you can make it whatever you want uh because you might want your hand a little fatter or a little thinner that choice is up to you so this is that is the beginning of our spoon layout right there now we're going to lay out the bowl and because we chose this round bowl it's really easy to lay out and to lay out the round bowl you use a compass that is really really easy to do what you want to do is when you start your radius you know you want to be be realistic about what you have here because you can see that piece of wood kind of angles out to the side so you can't lay out all the way to the top because you don't have that you got to come back in a little bit so let's go from our center control line out there and let's uh let's bring that in a little bit so we know we actually have what we think we have check it on the other side we're good over here but you want to start your circle from right here on the end you don't want to start it back if you start back it's going to make your hatchet work way harder so start it all the way from the end right there make that good and dark all right hopefully you can see that another thing i should have explained earlier is there is this style of spoon too so this one has this direct transition where the handle comes into the bowl and this one has this flow in you often see these flow ends and the reason is because they're way easier to carve but that's not the spoon we're carving today if you were to carve a spoon and you were like a beginner carver this would be way easier to do and if you were going to do that at that point you want to draw this round in here just by using any sort of round thing just like that and making you a line on it like that blah blah blah same thing on the other side that'll give you that flow in but we're not going to carve one of those flowing today we're going to carve this direct transition so let's go ahead and head over the chopping block and start cutting this sucker out so to remove all of the wood outside of this line the tool we're going to use is a hatchet and we're going to start with this one right here now all my tools are good and sharp so sharpening tools is going to be a video for another day but when you're carving we'll get to this later right now you just got to take my word for it but you'll see me using this drop all the time and i'll say it over and over strap often because it just brings your hatchet or your tool whatever you're using right back to peak performance so definitely strop often all my tools are already sharpened so i don't have to worry about sharpening them right now i just got to like hone them back up to peak performance real quick with this drop so now that i'm right back on top we're ready to go so when you remove this wood around through here what you want to keep in mind is you want to think for lack of a better term you want to imagine that you've put it on a bandsaw and you've cut 90 degrees from the top surface 90 degrees all the way around and you want it to look 90 degrees and you have to be honest with yourself about that because when you're carving a spoon or carving anything you're doing more than one thing at a time one thing is you're carving but the other thing is you're training your eye to be able to see what it is you're actually doing and don't be unrealistic about that because it is it's harder to see impurities than you think and so how we're going to carve the spoon it's going to make it easy for your eye to go to the impurities and easy for you to fix and remedy the impurities because we're going to make it really visible how to do that so anyways so i have this square and i'm going to make a mark on the end of this spoon now when i'm carving spoons all day i don't make these marks because i don't need to because my eye is already trained but i'm going to make them here because i'm going to use them as references to better explain what i just made an attempt to explain but trust me here in a bit it's going to make more sense so i'm going to start to remove all this wood and this is going to be our reference mark to see if we're actually 90 when we get down there okay we're about to grab the hatchet and start removing this wood so what i'm going to do is i'm going to make scores that go all the way directly to my line and these pieces of wood are going to pop off of there and it's going to be pretty efficient but what enables me to be efficient and direct my energy is because i took the time to do a proper layout and i'm not at all no none of my energy is being absorbed by second guessing my layout because i know that layout's right so i'm not going to sit there going is that right i don't really know and then each one of my strokes being directed with this insecurity no it's going to be directed with absolute intention directly to the line and that is going to aid in my ability to be much more efficient so that's why it's important to do a proper layout so let's go ahead and get into this scoring here so this first cut is pretty important okay so on that first cut now let's go ahead and flip it around to see if it lines up to that 90 degree mark i can't see from here but i'm imagining my eye can see 90 from this other angle so let's take a look and you can see it's a little higher back here but not bad i'm not terribly off if you get this line way off the end of your handle is going to be sticking to one side or the other and that'll be terrible looking so you don't want that okay so that's pretty good so i'm going to kind of use that as my sight reference from this stage on i'm about an inch and three quarter from my last cut and those pieces are just going to split off of there really effectively and i'm gonna i'm gonna do that same thing over and over up through here stepping out back about an inch and three quarters each time and when i get down to my line it's important that i keep this hatchet cut 90 to there then i'm going to step back halfway i'm gonna score it one more time right down to the line another inch and three and then i'm going to quarters halfway and score it again again another inch and three quarters you can see that wood coming off of that really effectively and reliably step back and score it now this cut you have to slow down just a little bit on i'm going to follow right around that line and this is a live unedited shot right here of how long it takes you to do one side okay i'm right down to my mark now now see i'm imagining that i can see 90 degrees right here so if you're not good at seeing 90 degrees get a square and check it but stay 90 that's really really important you want to cut right down that line now we're going to see just how 90 i really am and i'm not a hundred percent you see how that's wider back there than up here no big deal i'll true that up that is another thing you have to practice while you're spoon carving is being honest with yourself anyways so now that i have that i'm going to flip it around here and cut on down into there you won't be able to see the line from here from from your view but i still want to show you how it's supposed to look when you're doing it you want to slow your chops down a little bit because you don't want to hack right into the side of your bowl but we've already made this cut right here scored all the way to the line so these wood chips should within reason come off pretty reliably now these cuts you don't want to overrun you have to stop right there you don't want to hack in there and overrun just leave that be okay so that's one side of the handle roughed out so let's go ahead and do the other side all right we're going to work on the other side of the spoon now and take the other side down it's going to look very similar to what we did here but i want to do a slightly different anyways before we get started there is one thing that i should definitely say okay so i carve spoons all the time this is what we make a living doing long story short carving is incredibly dangerous and using sharp hatchets and sharp anything is really really really dangerous and so you have to really be careful when you're doing this one of the mistakes everybody makes and you will make this mistake because everyone makes this mistake when you go to hold your spoon blank and you go to chop on it your first instinct is going to be to like i need to hold this spoon like really really hard and the best way to hold it really stable is to put your hand on top of it because that's the best place to hold it for stability but the worst place to hold it for safety because it puts all your hand and all your fingers right on the top so when you're chopping you can miss a stroke and bang come right down on the top of it it'll just pop your finger directly right off just completely super easy so you have to continuously remind yourself to not hold it up here never put any fingers over the top of any kind always hold it on the side because on the side if you over stroke or something you're not going to hit your fingers and if you were to miss a cut or miss a chop you would hit your hand and it would draw your hand down and cut your hand really really bad it would be awful but it would be less likely to cut your fingers straight off so never hold the block of wood on the top always hold it down here on the side another thing don't be doing any like wild chops at your legs keep your you know keep real stable you'll notice all the time i have my knee up here and my block of wood's really stable you'll never see me in this position like out here like a wild boy scout never do that always keep lots of stability my elbow's in tight that's my pivot point right here so i can return to the same spot every time and so a lot of this technique is really really important probably not going to have time to explain all of it in this video but remember the most important thing is never put your hand on top of the piece of wood while you're carving you'll chop your fingers off always keep it over here so on this side of the spoon here you notice my chops went directly to the line super efficient really really good if you feel capable of doing that some of you will be capable some of you won't be capable because some of you it'll be your first time picking up a hatchet so i don't recommend doing that on your first time so what i'm going to do over here on this other side is i'm going to make those scores coming into halfway that way i have a chance to chop that off and practice getting that good flow now if i can't get that good flow here chances are when i get to my mark i'm also not going to be able to get that good flow so that's why i'm going to just chop my scores in halfway and it's going to give me a time to a chance to practice before i get to my line i'm going to only do it once here in a super beginner situation you might want to just make your scores a little bit that'll give you multiple times to practice getting that good flow and checking that 90 before you actually get to the line because you don't want to get to that line and find out that you're just you're you're not capable of getting that flow because your product or your project will be over at that point so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to you know take a half step here and then i'm going to practice getting a flow and showing you how to do that because if you're a beginner you would definitely want to pursue it that way so let's flip it around and start so i'm going to make these chops this time halfway in halfway to the line you won't be able to see the line because the line's on the other side of the spoon now i'm going to practice getting a flow off of here i can see the line from my side of the wood you won't be able to from from your side but uh so now i'm just going to practice getting a nice flow because you will need to be able to do that and it's much better to practice in a consequence-free area right here than rather than when you get down to the line so you can see i made that that nice flow there and so it shows that i have control and another thing we can check too is how close to being able to eyeball 90 are we and you can see that's pretty close so when you make your first pass put a square on it and check and you'll find you're not that 90 but it's important to train your eye to see what 90 is and where everybody gets tempted as they they are so eager to get to the line so they get to the line on the face of the spoon over here on the back side of the spoon they're still way up here and so their line will be like cut at a diagonal like that because they just want to get to that line don't be tempted by that there's no short cutting you have to take the whole thing at once don't just take the face anyways i'm going to finish up this cut so some of these spots working in around the bowl here getting down to the handle you do got to get creative get some different positions but always worry about this 90 right here always worry about that 90 degrees from the surface when you get chopping towards the bowl you want to go real slow because you don't want to overrun and split the side of your bowl off you don't even want to fracture that wood at all so you want to go really slow in this location right here these cuts can't override at all they have to barely meet so be real gentle with that so let's take a look at our 90 on the end of the handle here and see how close we are we're we're paralleling that line i would say almost exactly and so that's really close we've already like distorted the other side from using that as our bearing point but it's important to get that part of the handle right otherwise it'll stick off to one side the other and you just won't like it and so very important to keep this 90 all the way down through this you can see that's a pretty good flow so now we're going to tune up the front of the spoon right here you want to go slow at first and as we work our way around to the front right here you would think that you just take this and chop that right off and get rid of that curl immediately you don't want to do that because where the hatchet lands right down here in this crease that makes a dark shadow and that dark shadow enables your eye to go directly to it and it can reference or aid in your ability to reference that 90 off of the surface so don't just pop that peel off of there you want that dark shadow as your bull's eye that's what you're aiming for now a lot of those pills are going to pop off on their own but you want to maintain that dark crease you can see i'm maintaining that dark crease that that's my target that's what i'm going for every time not only is it my target but it's my site reference so as you're carving you're always trying to create these site references because that aids in your ability to actually see what it is you're doing and it makes it more possible for you to visualize or to reference the impurities and correct them as you go all right i'll do the same thing here to the other side you won't be able to see the line from there but again i'm starting that peel i'm landing my hatchet in it every time and i'm starting that dark crease as my visual reference that's the only thing that allows me to see that 90 degrees and to have a target to aim for with my hatchet every time everyone does the same thing here too they they get in a hurry and they carve at an angle to the line and they think oh i'm almost done but they missed the entire back half you can't do that you have to start with the 90 and keep that 90 continue it all the way around okay so there's a lot to explain in design and wood carving and layout i'm not going to be able to cover it all in this video i'll just i'll kind of scratch the surface and shine a little light right on the corner of what we're talking about so when we're carving the spoon we are going to work one dimension at a time so you can see we laid it out and we cut out this one dimension you can just see the one dimension this way we're not caring about yet only this way and that 90 degrees very important i'm sure you're sick of hearing me say 90 degrees but really important to always make sure that all of this is 90 degrees from the surface okay so when you work one dimension at a time you cultivate these crisp ridges now these crisp bridges are what enables your eye to see any impurities and that's why even on the video you can see that there is some pretty good flow to this and i'm sure if there's a hump or a bump somewhere you'll be able to see it on the video because of those sight ridges are allowing your eye to see it now if we had to work three dimensionally all that would have been rounded off and you wouldn't have been able to see as easily that direct rigid that sight ridge right there so that's why we work one dimension at a time because we're trying to cultivate those sight ridges it it enables our eye to see more accurately what we're actually looking at so now that we have this first dimension done we're going to add the second dimension we're going to add the rocker to our bowl and the flow to our handle so let's go ahead and draw that on here so when we laid out the top of the spoon we did a specific geometric perfect layout and we went directly to that so these are all control lines right here these are all control lines now on the side of the spoon we're not going to have the same ability to geometrically lay it out so we're going to have to use our ability to to draw and to create and and uh and achieve a good flow now a good flow is very important so we're going to draw these these are these are control lines these are reference lines what we're drawing the reference line is much different than a control line because it's only a reference which means you don't have to actually follow it i know that sounds confusing but it actually makes sense okay so we don't have the ability or the advantage to put a batten on here and draw this line exactly what we need to do we're not going to lay out both sides we're only going to lay out one side that's what makes these reference lines that's the rocker to our bowl and this is going to be the flow to our handle these are reference lines hopefully you can see as i'm drawing this the black on the walnut i'm sure it's not that visible you want to you want to make sure that this cut is fairly smooth you can see i have that right there and this right here i'm just being honest about the poor job i did right there but you don't want to take so long on this because that's unrealistic too but you want to make it smooth enough to where you can draw on it so that is our handle and that is the rocker to our bowl you don't need to put the secondary line in there but i'm going to do it anyways just so you are more comfortable with seeing it okay so these are just hand scribbled uh reference lines so now let's go ahead and start by cutting the rocker on this bowl okay so when i'm cutting the rocker on this bowl what i want to do is start by making a score right here because i don't want my overrun chops to continue to split into our handle and damage our handles so i'm going to make a score right here so these cuts from our rocker on our bulb will flake off better so you'll see i'll turn this way cutting straight in you don't want to overdo this either because that will come and mess up the back of the bowl so i'm cutting straight in here i'm just getting somewhere down there close to the handle with that score line okay now bracing it on my knee finding a good place on the chopping block here that won't keep slipping out i can feel my hatchet losing performance i want to strop it again to bring it right back to the peak performance always stop often now this is a hard cut to make again notice how my hands are down on it on the sides not on the top way down on the sides go slow on these chops you're not going to save the world with one of them it's gonna it's gonna take you a while on this the problem is like as you carve the spoon each step gets harder and harder as you go the beginning is the easiest part it only gets harder from there don't take over wild chops and then and split your handle that's why i'm leaving those curls to prevent that so you can see i made it down to my line there now i have to cut the center out right there and when i do that you don't want to keep like messing this top cut up and bang bang keep working down you'll destroy your project so go really slow on this entrance cut right here really slow this is a hard one to get and these are reference lines which means you don't need to follow them you might i find that when i'm carving with the hatchet i have more control with the hatchet than i do with the pencil on the wood i can see better the flow coming from the hatchet than i can the flow coming from the pencil so unlike the surface like when we drew the first dimension on the spoon that was a complete you know total geometric layout these are not these are just references so so you you're doing more site work here and less following the line so when you get that first cut you know you can see this is a good example i did not follow my line because i don't really like my line that's going to put too much rocker so i just made that cut and i like the way that cut looks better but you'll notice that that cut is not higher on one side than on the other and you need to take painstaking effort to look at that and be honest and see if it's higher or lower because that needs to be exactly the same on both sides in other words 90 from the side and that's why it's so critical to keep all this because it aids in your ability to cite what we're even talking about now anyways now we're going to surface out the top flow of that handle so i'm going to make me a score right here to cut down to that line now right down to that line start back here don't get going too fast because you'll over cut bang and cut right into the back of your bowl and ruin your your whole project again you don't have to follow that line that you drew but you can if you want that's up to you depends on how good you drew it but from my my perspective i can cite right down this handle i can follow this sight ridge that i'm creating and and i feel like i have a better vantage point than i did when i was drawing it with a pencil so i can see the flow a lot better from right here and control it better with my hatchet than i can with the pencil we're going to not worry too much about this area because you don't want to do use too big of a tool for too small as a job now we're going to surface out the back of this handle you can see i'm going to start making these scores light here if i make them too deep it's going to go pop off my uh the hook part of the handle right there i don't want that happen so i'm going to go pretty light on these but i'm going to keep digging deeper and deeper with each one of them until i get closer down there to the line pretty close to the line now right here see your instinct would be to turn around and start chopping this way but that's going to damage it's going to round off and mar up the front of your bowl and chip that off so you don't want to do that so i'm going to come over here and put it on the side where i'm burying more back here watch your fingers on this cut right here it's dangerous i'm just trying to get down to the line with my scores i'm not going to be able to get a really good flow right there with the hatchet we're going to come back with a knife and do that i just want to get rid of most of the wood and now now i can work back from this direction and flow out the rest of it you don't want to keep over chopping here because you're going to split through know when to say wind right there that is rough looking right there that looks terrible but we're going to finish that up with a uh a knife the hatchet's not the tool for the job right there all right i'm going to flow out the front here real quick again your instinct is to put it right up like that and you'll and chop from here which would be a great place except for you'll damage the face of that so you can't do that so we are going to start adding the third dimension but before we add the third dimension i wanted to take a little bit of time to point out the advantage of one of the advantages of the way that we went about doing this now see and doing one dimension at a time we enabled ourselves to develop these sight ridges and you are on the other side of the world seeing this from a video that's made by a phone and so and and even there you can see these sight ridges with your eye on the other side of the world so here in the present you'd be able to really really see them and your eye can go directly towards anything and it just really helps you understand the layout of things much better when you go about it one dimension at a time and it enables you to understand the layout of anything and how you could do anything in stages and so in uh on youtube i see all the time where guys are carving spoons out of like some dried 2x4 or something and they have it like clamped down to their shop bench and bang bang it's just like this and they're digging the bowl out first and then they start working like just all like i don't even know and and and uh i'll stop right there but but let me return to this when you are carving a spoon you're doing two things one is making a spoon and that can improve your life the other thing that you're doing is learning how to understand what it is you're doing and i think ultimately that brings much more value than the spoon and if you take time to do it in stages and understand the stages that better aids in your ability to understand the concept of learning what you're doing and if you just go about it all one time you know whacking it with a hammer and whatnot clamping it and rounding everything off it eliminates your ability to actually visualize the steps and stages and reduces your ability to actually learn what it is you're doing and so that's another reason why i think it's so important to do it one dimension at a time excuse me for rambling now we'll go ahead and get on to adding the actual third dimension now when you add the third dimension you kind of want to add the third dimension the same way that you went about it singular dimensionally earlier i'm going to round off of the back right here around the whole back over and i'm going to do it in a way that enables us to maintain sight ridges it's always important to maintain those sight ridges without the sight ridge you're really only guessing at what you're doing with the sight bridge it really helps you be able to see what it is you're actually doing so i'm just going to round off from one side all the way to the other and when you maintain the sight ridge it will directly show you how accurate your ability to create a nice flow a nice round actually was and i'll stop about a quarter inch before i get to the top that's important you always want to stop about a quarter inch from when you get to the top of the bowl there so i'm rounding from one side all the way through to the other and from my vantage point here where my eye is i can see pretty accurately what i'm trying to accomplish so now that i've actually made my first pass maintaining these sight ridges let's take a look at it and see what we have so you can see that is a nice flow and you can see it because we've still maintained these sight ridges and so we can still see our symmetry here this aids in our ability to understand the symmetry and so now we have established four quarters one two three four and and you can just see the symmetry again an advantage of establishing those sight ranges and doing things systematically so okay we have that nice round over now we're going to go to this first quarter and we're going to round that over we're going to round this over so on and so forth quarter number one i'm going to create this dark shadow of a crease right here i'm going to try to show you on the phone here and see if it helps in your ability to understand what it is i'm talking about okay so you can see that that shadow down in there that shadow is what i'm using as my reference that's my sight reference right there that shadow and i'm going to walk that shadow all the way forward on this one quarter stopping about a quarter inch from the top you want to maintain that right here about a quarter inch from the top now we're going to work on this back quarter right here working back towards the handle like i said earlier every step from the beginning of the process gets harder and harder and harder that's why you need to develop ways to learn what it is you're actually doing so your skills can progress as you go so when you get to the end you actually possess the skills you will need to finish the job and make it look like something worth having so i'm working back towards the handle here creating that same shadowy crease for my site reference but i'm keeping in mind i don't want to over chop and damage my handle so these i kind of encourage the split to happen more than in the front you want to go slow through here don't overdo it when you get close encourage a little split off right here don't over do this cut either you can see how close my thumb is to a dangerous spot right there be aware that if you over cut you'll cut into the side of your handle you'll damage your work you won't be able to recover from it so don't over cut there you have to make multiple attempts to go back and forth for relief cuts all right that is all we're going to do there all right time to tune up the other side getting close on this tune up this last little detail here be careful with this don't over cut it you'll split the bottom of your bowl off don't over cut this just split the bottom of your handle off get back closer to my reference line right here and that is we're getting close here let me turn up this a little bit but that's about as far as we're gonna go with the hatchet you can see what we've got we've maintained all these sight ridges right here super important and we're about a quarter inch right here from the top all the way around you'll see where this comes into play in the very next step how important it was to maintain roughly that quarter inch if you maintained a lot more you'll see it's a huge disadvantage in the next step all right let's go ahead and jump to the next step okay so you can see right there that is roughly a nice round but there's also some humps and bumps it's not it's not a finished flow so we're going to add our finished flow to that round right there and that's why it's important to bring that to a quarter inch so we only have a quarter inch to move around through there if it was three quarters of an inch or something that's much more wood to move at a time and it's way harder so to bring it to that that quarter inch is a huge advantage so make sure to do that with the hatchet so now we're going to work on surfacing this flow all the way around to really true that up now when i start on this i like to think of it in quarters also because i like to kind of maintain a systematic understanding of what it is we're doing and not just get lost in 80d popping and sparking work on this go work on that for a little bit don't really do it that way so kind of start and think of it as quarters here too so i rough that out and i go back to look at it and that's actually really good i don't need to go back over that i'm going to flow this other quarter into it and i want to switch knives real quick but remember stop often yeah this is working way better so i'm just going to flow this right around into the other side all right so we have you can see that is a much better flow all the way around through there and again that flow is 90 degrees from the surface all the way around and that just trued up that profile what you're looking at right there and now we're going to flow the whole back of the bowl you can see that's pretty lumpy from our hatchet so we're going to flow that out we're going to surface that whole back of the bowl out using this fishtail right here again strap often so when we go to surface out the back of this bowl we are going to do the same thing that we did with the hatchet just a much more controlled version because we're using a smaller more elegant tool so i'm going to take this cut up and all the way over just like i did with the hatchet and this is going to enable us to see our final flow as far as the roundness of the profile is concerned when you're cutting with the chisel here or any knife you're never just hydraulically pushing straight forward like a bulldozer it is a slice a pry and a push it's a compound situation that's the term carving that's why in sailing or in surfing we use the same term because the wave is pushing forward the board's pushing that way it's carving it's a compound action and so here we are carving again not with a high not with a you know a barbaric primitive straightforward push it's not that it is a very advanced slice pry and push that's why it's looking pretty effortless okay so you can see right there we're only concerned with the profile and and you can see we added that nice roundness to it now that we can see that with our eye we're going to ride that same wave all the way to the front starting one quarter at a time i'm going to start my tool here real quick and start bringing this to the front on this side okay we've surfaced it out all the way to the front now it's time to turn around and ride the same flow all the way back to the handle this cut that i'm using here is not done with one hand it's done with two hands as you can see and that's why it looks pretty efficient when you're watching it when you try to do it it's going to be a little harder but make sure to use two hands another thing i should explain yeah this is a good time to take the time to explain that you'll see i have that much of the chisel sticking out of my hand and this part of my hand right here is my stop so even though i'm carving towards my finger and some in some places not here though because i'll stab the handle and so as i'm pushing i'm only taking a half inch stroke at a time because my hand is bearing right on that so my arm is not doing the pushing it's my hand and my wrist right here so if i was going like this i go wham and skip past stab my legs to have my hand so i always have this stop right here and i'm only pushing with my two hands not my whole body and and that's that's what makes it safe because i can't do one of these random boy scout stabs so always have a stop when you're carving i'll explain that more thoroughly as we get further into the video but have that stop is really important that's what keeps you from cutting yourself so again as i'm carving here you'll see that my elbow back here is hitting into my side and that is my stop so i have control with that i'm not just going to do one of these and slash my side because i have this stop right there always have a stop when you're carving we're going to go about this handle kind of how we did everything else just one quarter at a time this is one quarter that's one quarter so on and so forth we're just adding a nice flow to the whole handle and finishing out into the back of the bowl here this takes a little bit of doing right here so move move slowly through this area start on the other side here and flow it in you'll see as i'm working towards the other side i'm leaving that initial strip right there because that was my first flow and i don't want to lose that right now i'm going to cut that off last for uh reasons of keeping my geometric layout proper all right we're going to flow out the bottom of the handle right here you can see that's where we were hitting with the hatchet and uh hatchet just became too big for that so we're going to hit it with a knife and and give the back of this handle a proper flow again back to the old north bay now you can do this however you want to what i'm going to do here is i'm going to flow it slightly round and right up the side here a little bit but i'm going to leave that rigid sight ridge because that's going to enable anybody who picks up the spoon to see a good flow if you were worried about the flow and it didn't look good you could round that off and that would hide your core job that you did on on shaping the handle but we don't want to hide the job because we're not uh unproud of it we're proud of the job we've done so we're going to leave that sight ridge for everyone to see and aid in their ability to see the nice flow that we accomplished that uh looks pretty good so we're going to leave that nice line there to really help everyone be able to see that nice flow all right we've got the back of our bowl taken care of the whole handle is taken care of our transition here looks nice time to start working on digging out the bowl and the way we're going to start there is getting us a nice control line here we're going to use the old finger gauge trick here roughly a quarter inch i hope you can see the line it's black on walnut so that's going to be challenging for you to see but we're going to make a line roughly a quarter inch in from the outside so to start digging out the bowl the tool that we are going to use is uh this gouge right here and we're just going to get close to the edge and just just start it with this gouge let's go ahead and get into it so now that we have taken that gouge once around to just kind of establish digging out the bowl we're going to switch to this other crooked knife this north bay i've got two of these you'll see one is not as bent as the other one and uh i definitely recommend buying both of these north bay forge look them up online you'll find them i think they're about 65 bucks a night and they should be about a thousand dollars a knife because that's how much value they bring anyways yeah let's start digging this sucker out so this is a really effective tool really good it really just speeds up your performance and makes you so much more capable now you'll probably wonder why i've been wearing this leather cuff right here what this leather cuff does is that nice crisp sight ridge that we've worked so painfully to uh to maintain that's really sharp and really abrasive and if you're carbon without it it it wears out your your your wrist right there as you're as you're carving now i've got this cuff one and you can see i ride right on that leather cuff as i'm prying right here and so i can do that all day long but if you carve all day without it you end up getting a big blister right there and you bleed on your work and it's terrible and miserably uncomfortable so having a leather cuff right there is uh is really good if you don't have one no big deal but i would still make one because they're really good so throughout the whole process of digging the bowl out what you kind of want to think about is making sure that you're maintaining a nice flow the whole time so you're practicing uh obtaining the skill that you're going to need if you can't get a flow at any point through the digging out the bowl process then that would be ridiculous to think that you will be able to get a flow right whenever it matters that final surfacing so make sure to practice that nice flow throughout the whole thing so when you get down to where it counts you have the skill that you need to really surface it out and make it look good all right so we are putting the finishing touches on the inside of the bowl [Applause] and take your time and get a good even wall thickness there somewhere roughly around a quarter inch if it's kind of varies in thickness that is a sign of uh poor skill so try to not have that try to have a nice even ball thickness all right we're done with the inside of that bowl we're going to start flowing out this rocker on the top right here and uh we're getting closer to the to the end so anyways this take your time on this this is this is a a really important part it's not very hard to actually do with the knife it's just uh to make it look right to whenever you stand back and sight the spoon to see a really nice flow that's where the challenge is going to come in here so and depending on what piece of wood you have there's going to be a transition spot right in here somewhere this one doesn't actually have it because of the way the grain is but you'll end up digging a big hole right there so just just be careful you can see i got some funny grain back here that's putting up some resistance here let me cite what's actually happening okay that went really good so our rocker looks really good there and i'm gonna sight it all the way around let me see if i can get a uh can you see that is it focused you want that nice flow right there that nice nice flow all the way around now that you can see that flow we're going to get and you can see because we've maintained this site ridge and this interior site ridge you can see the symmetry all the way around but we're going to go ahead and flow this interior roll it out to the outside there this is one of the last stages of carving is just rolling this out to the outside there's that transition and watch out for that be careful right there because you'll end up going this way and that way this way that way until you dig a thin spot right there you don't want that to happen so we're almost done with the carving of this spoon the next step is to finish it and i'll show you how we finish our spoons over on the bench i'm not going to finish this one because it's still a little green i like to leave it sit around for a day or three so it can dry out so that is that's that that is the spoon that we carved today now i'm gonna move it around real slow so you can kind of see some of the uh the proper flows i don't know if you can really get a good sight down that ridge right there that really enables you to see some of that nice graceful flow that we accomplished so on and so forth around the other side there that nice rocker to the bowl good flow to the handle so that's that uh we're not going to finish this spoon today as far as the finish goes because we're going to let it dry but i'm going to take you over here to the bench and i'm going to show you how we finish our spoons and what we use to do that with let's go take a look so this is the spoon we carved today we're not going to finish this one today but i wanted to take time to show you how we take the spoon from this stage to actually done uh this one was carved green like we talked earlier so we're going to set that down and let it dry a little bit and it'll only need a couple of days so there is this silly rule in the wood carving world you'll hear all the time how long does it take a piece of wood to dry well roughly about an inch a year and that is a great rule that means absolutely nothing because a a log or a piece of wood in log form will almost never dry because it takes so long to air for air to get to the middle now once you carve this spoon from green wood into this shape that that bowl is a quarter inch so it's only going to take a few days to dry out and this handle is so thin it again is only going to take a few days to dry out so that's how long it will take this to dry out a few days depending on the weather outside if it's really rainy and humid you understand what i'm saying we're really hot so blah blah blah let's pick up one of these spoons we carved a few days ago this one's already dry you can hear it it's just crisp and rigid and uh and really dry so we're gonna finish this one off how i finish the spoon off is i have a piece of 220 sandpaper that i use and i'm not actually sanding it i don't want to sand the tool marks out of it that's not what we're here to do we just kind of want to soften it a little bit so i'm just going to lightly go over it and i just want i don't want to take the tool marks because you want to be able to see that it's hand done so i'm just kind of barely go over and soften it just a little bit it's more of like an aging rather than a sanding so you can see i haven't hit those ridges yet i want to save those ridges to last and i want to roll them just a little bit to again to aid in that proper flow because that's what you're going to see and uh so i'll just go over it real fast here just enough to kind of soften the edges not too much sanding you can still see all of the tool marks make sure you get down the bottom finish off the outside here you want to be pretty systematic when you're doing it and sanding the spoon or finishing the spoon like this you really can destroy the spoon and make it look really bad you'll notice as i'm sanding i'm not rounding over that edge i'm keeping that edge crisp until the last thing that i do will be to properly flow that edge in the final step of trying to preserve that that nice sight ridge so now i'm going to barely just roll that edge right around through there just enough but you can still see it's pretty crisp and your eye goes right to that outer edge so that's as much sanding as we're going to do now i'm going to put the finish on it the finish that we use is a finish that we make it has beeswax carnauba wax walnut oil and lemon essential oil in it and this is the texture of and it's really hot out today it's probably working on 90 degrees and even in 90 degrees this is as soft as it is if it's colder it's a little bit harder so the wax creates a nice rigid you know crisp surface and and the oil soaks in to preserve the wood a little bit goes a long ways you dig a little bit out if you don't have any of this which i'm sure you won't have any you can just use the olive oil to finish your spoon up and that's that's a good safe food safe finish i don't recommend using mineral oil but that will be up to you you can use whatever you want olive oil works great you don't have to feel bad about eating it this this what we have here works great you don't have to feel bad about putting it in your food and uh when you're finishing out a whole bunch of spoons your hands will get pretty oily and you want to have like a cotton cloth by nearby that you can uh kind of wipe the oily feel of the spoon off but we're not going to worry about that today because i didn't put too much on there and it's just kind of rubbing in really nicely so that is what a finished product looks like that is the finish that we put on all our bowls and our spoons that we make and that's it this sucker is ready to go in a pot of beans or soup or whatever you want to use it for ready to go that's the pretty much the finished product right there so i hope you enjoyed watching this video in a video like this it's kind of challenging to make there is way more to explain than i was able to explain in this short period of time even though the short period of time ended up being painfully long it's still not long enough to explain all there is to explain so anyways apologize for the length of the video hope it brought you some value and thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Carving A Path

Views: 103,716

Rating: 4.9341297 out of 5

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Id: juHmFzfCEjE

Length: 76min 55sec (4615 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020