The Simple Art of Spoon Carving

one of my favorite things about carving spoons is that I can pick up a piece of wood basically off the forest floor or just from the top of the tree that maybe I've cut down for some other purpose and I can start and finish a project in a very short period of time because I'm working this from trees and from Greenwood I think it's one of the best exercises and breaking your way into looking at Greenwood as a functional usable material it just opens up all sorts of avenues because all of a sudden you look at every tree as a potential resource and you let you look at every branch that comes out and say oh that make a great ladle and that would make a great this it's that Direct Connect that I think is really fantastic and spoon carving the first split that I go to make on the log is basically down the pith and perpendicular to where the branch is so wherever the branch grows out I need to be perpendicular to that so I can basically take the log in half that's gonna both reveal where the center pith point of the branches it's also going to get rid of a lot of material that I don't need any longer depending on the size of it I can do that splitting with a chisel I can do it with my pro or if it's larger I do it with a wedge and a sledgehammer the toolkit for carving spoons can be pretty rudimentary which is one of the things that I find very refreshing about it that being said there are some specialty tools that I really like to use such as the slide knife I also use the hook knife to clean out the bowls I've also used the bandsaw especially with these hardwoods that really speed to the process along you know I don't think you should be ashamed of any tool if it's going to get the job done where the branch grows into the trunk you have fibers coming in in different directions but they literally weave into each other and they cross over each other in such a way that they form this incredibly strong joint you can't split along there because you've got sort of a crosshatch of fibers so the first thing I need to do is sever those fibers at the trunk I have to saw across the trunk portion the hatch is really handy mainly for hewing and a little paring but mainly for hewing which means I take a series of strokes that are going to cut cross grain creating sort of a weak layer at the bottom of those strokes at the depth of those and then I come down across all those chips that I've created slopping them off and it's an ancient process it's how the X used to be used to square up beams and that's the main use of it the draw knife is very handy because I use it to sort of clean up and create a planar piece of wood out of a very organic one it gives me my first real decent flats on both the back and the front of the piece and once I have it on the front and I've carved away that bark then I'm going to have a nice surface to draw the shape of the spoon that I intend to build the shape arts is not essential equipment to this you could do it in just a vise but the shave horse always does a little bit better than the vise as far as flexibility with something like a spoon there is no front really there is no back and every side has to be beautiful and addressed so that I find the shape horse a really easy way to be able to address each part of the spoon moving around fluidly without having an issue once I have the basic outline of the spoon drawn on there I want to waste away as much material as possible just to get it out of my way so the hatchet is really great for that so is the draw knife and the harder woods it's far easier on your body to hog out the proportions of the bowl with a gouge and then go back in with the hook knife what I try to do is get as much of the wood out of the way as I can but then when it comes time to start really thinking about shape that's when I switch over to the far more controllable slide and hook knife when you're using a slide the best workbench is your lap in your body basically there's a lot of different positions you can use it with a lot of control the longer blades are great because you can slice as you're taking these strokes and you can hold the slide and the spoon in such a way that you get very powerful long slicing strokes say - to carve down the handle or you can also use sort of a scissor type stroke where you use your body and lever off of your thumb while holding the bowl of the spoon just to carve the back of the bowl and get a lot of power you can really pull off a lot of wood quite easily especially with green wood and especially if you're using a softer wood the hook knife is very good especially if the wood soft but the hook knife is wonderful for tuning up those surfaces it's just that that curved shape just Maps itself and it normally has a variable curve so you can use it in all sorts of different portions of the bowl and just nothing can reach into those spaces and follow those arcs quite as well as a hook knife I tend to recommend you use softwoods especially in the beginning like birch which is going to carve beautifully it's going to cut really cleanly especially when it's green but I actually tend to use harder woods like Applewood or maple which I find give me spoons that can be made incredibly thin and they can become so like thin but it's strong at the same time it can be very refined and and they can be incredibly durable those harder woods that tend to be a little more difficult to work they take more effort but I like the longevity of those spoons I make all my spoons out of green wood every last one and so drying them is a big part of the process once the wood is dry now my cuts are different than before before I wanted them not to tear out but I was really going for shape over surface and in the end I'm mainly going for surface if the shape will already be there what I'm trying to do is to make those facets not only tell the shape but they should also be very even and have a nice sharp glow to them I'm just looking for the finest cuts I can get because that's tactically very rewarding when you're using the piece or even just looking at it a lot of spoon carving comes from when the materials are available so if I've taken a tree down for chairs which is generally why I would take it down and I see a lot of nice branches at the top you know that used to be waste and now it's a very exciting part of my repertoire I can take those and make spoons out of them I tend to do it either sitting at night I used to sit by the fire and discard spoons and in summer I sit on the back porch and carve spoons it's just it's a it's a very meditative thing to do if if ever you're watching somebody do it you'll find it they could care less what you're doing and if you try and pull them away they would rather take one more cut and that one more cut goes on for hours it's very addictive way of working wood and it's just a very engaged in an immediate way of working it and once you've made one successful spoon there's no way to stop you you you

Channel: FineWoodworking

Views: 1,543,630

Rating: 4.910748 out of 5

Keywords: 4680283244001, free, yt2, TIV721, galbert, youtube, carving, spoon, Fine Woodworking

Id: vbdTc233FtM

Length: 7min 26sec (446 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/andynator1000]

This guys sounds like he's about 20 years younger than he is.

[u/WoodcraftKevin]

Hi. My name is Kevin and I'm addicted to spoon carving.

[u/lumm0r]

I thought this was from an episode of Portlandia

[u/smirking777]

it's easy to do. just remove everything that isn't a spoon.

[u/[deleted]]

they say he carved it himself... from a bigger spoon.

[u/novice_everything]

Now I'm going to start seeing potential ladles everywhere.

[u/Hybridjosto]

It is, I got wood in my freezer to keep it fresh!

[u/[deleted]]

Reminds me of this guy--->

[u/Willbo]

Listening to this guy answer questions about himself is oddly inspiring.