Ever wondered how to carve a spoon? Well if you have this is the perfect place to be.
Upon searching the internet you will find countless different methods for carving spoons. The method I am about to teach you is just the way that I learned, but it has got to be one of the best ways out there. That’s because the steps are simple and easy to follow. It only requires minimal tooling, a branch off a tree and some patience.
Materials you NEED
The tools that I have learned how to use are fairly common and can be found anywhere:
- Knife
- Hook Knife
- Saw
- Hatchet
NOTE: I used a hatchet head as couldn’t find my actual hatchet
The wood you will need is also fairly common and can be found anywhere:
- A branch off a tree
Step 1 – Carving Tools
The first thing you will need to do is gather your carving tools and make sure they are as SHARP as you can get them. Sharp tools are the most important aspect of any type of carving. They allow you to retain your sanity, create clean cuts and stay safe.
You may be wondering how a sharp knife is safer than a dull one. The answer to that question is quite simple: DULL KNIVES ARE UNPREDICTABLE. Imagine if you were using a dull blade and putting full force into a cut when suddenly the wood splits. The knife will go shooting forward into whatever is in front of it, be it your femoral artery (causing you to die within minutes) or just the person beside you. With a sharp blade you will be able to make the cut in a controlled manner without splitting the wood.
Anyway back to step one. I assume that you have some sort of knife already laying around your house. Pretty much anything will do the job, as long as it is not a kitchen knife. Some examples are things like a Leatherman, folding knife, hunting knife, bushcraft knife, etc. I recommend that you use a blade that is around two to three inches long though. This will provide you with more control.
I am currently using Mora’s Cutting Knife 120 which has, as recommended, a two inch blade. It is absolutely perfect for this type of carving, especially if it’s razor sharp. If you are willing to spend an extra 30$, definitely get something like this.
PRO TIP- In the case that you don’t have a knife laying around, or aren’t willing to buy one, a good replacement is a UTILITY knife. It takes a bit of getting used to but it’ll work fine.
These are really useful because they have small blades that can easily be replaced with new sharp ones once they get dull. This really helps if you don’t know how to sharpen a knife. I’ll be using one for this tutorial.
On to the hook knife. There are a couple of different brands that make these blades, mainly Morakniv and Flexcut. I currently have a Flexcut KN26 right-handed hook knife and it works really well. It has a shallow curve making it really easy to create smooth spoon bowls.
Mora makes an interesting double sided hook knife with a couple different variations. Both of these two brands sell their knives for around 30$, so getting one is a pretty affordable investment.
Step 2 – Wood
The second step of this process is to find yourself a tree and harvest one of its branches. There are many different types of woods that you can use for spoon making but for now there is only one thing you need to pay attention to. This is that the wood your using doesn’t have a PITH. A pith is a soft spongy interior of some softer woods that is not good for carving. Instead you need to be looking for woods that look something like this:
PRO TIP: Another thing to look for is that your branch doesn’t have any knots in it.
Once you have found yourself a nice straight branch that is around two to three inches in diameter you need to process it. This is where the saw comes in. You need the saw to cut down the branch as well as to cut it to length. The length of your branch depends on how long you want your spoon to be. For beginning I would recommend a length of about SIX TO SEVEN INCHES.
Step 3 – Spoon Blank
Now that you have a length of branch you need to split it. For this step get your hatchet and a mallet or thick stick. Set your branch upright on its sawed of end and place the blade your hatchet directly on the center of the branch. Holding the hatchet in one hand get your mallet/thick stick in the other and start pounding the hatchet into your branch. After a couple hits it should split.
Congrats! You now have two different blanks to make spoons out of.
Step 4 – The Bowl
In this step you are going to be carving the bowl of the spoon. But, before we get into that there is one CRUCIAL thing you need to do. That is flatten the top of your blank. Sometimes when you split your piece of branch it will be really rough or have a twist in it. So before carving out the bowl you need to make sure that the place you are carving into is smooth. It will be much harder to smooth the area out later while retaining a flat profile for the top of your spoon. To do this you can use your knife and just take long even strokes until the surface becomes uniform.
Once the area you are going to carve your bowl into is smooth you need to actually carve the bowl into it. For this you will be using the hook knife you just recently purchased.
PRO TIP- For starting out it really helps to sketch out what your spoon bowl is going to look like. If you feel like it you can go ahead and sketch out your spoons handle as well.
Hook knifes have a pretty specific technique with which to use them. It goes something like this.
Hold your spoon blank in your non-dominant hand:
Hold the hook knife in your dominant hand:
Put your thumb on the spoon blank like so:
Place the hook knife on the wood at a pretty severe angle:
Scoop down and out while watching for your thumb:
You need to start in the middle and work your way out to the boundaries of your bowl, which you sketched. Moving the wood around and doing different motions with the knife will help as well.
Step 5 – Shaping the Bowl
With the bowl of your spoon carved it is time to move around the the back. CARVING THE BACK OF THE BOWL FIRST will make it easier to come around and get its sides as there is less wood to deal with. So pull out your knife, flip your blank around and get carving.
One thing that is really important about this step is to CONSTANTLY CHECK the thickness of your spoons bowl. To do this put your pointer finger on the inside of the bowl and your thumb on the outside. Then run your fingers around the bowl, you will feel the distance between your two fingers and that is the bowls thickness.
PRO TIP- I would recommend keeping your bowl thicker on your first couple of spoons. Around 1/4 of an inch is a good start. This will prevent your from going all the way through, which is something I learned the hard way.
Another important thing to pay attention to, at ALL times, is to make sure you are carving WITH THE GRAIN. You will hear this being repeated by pretty much everyone who carves. To make sure you are carving with the grain always be cutting the wood downward.
An example is carving down from the top of your bowl to the edge of your spoon.
A counter example is starting at the edge of your spoon and carving upward to the top of your bowl.
Carving against the grain will cause tear outs which will RUIN your spoon. So make sure to always carve downwards no matter how awkward it might feel. To prevent some awkwardness you can, very carefully, try and carve towards yourself.
Continue carving the back of the bowl down, making sure to stay with the grain, until you reach your desired thickness all around. Then flip the spoon back over and take off the corners. Make sure to keep the distance from the bowl to edge of the spoon the same as the thickness of the bowl.
Step 6 – The Handle
The next step of this spoon carving process is to work on the handle. This is when you can relax a bit and start taking off big chunks of wood. Make sure you are still carving with the grain.
PRO TIP – Carving with the grain is more important if your spoon handle has some elegant curvature at the end.
The only hard part of this process is carving the back side of the bowl as there isn’t much to hold on to. A technique I found the helps me with this is RESTING THE BUTT of the spoon on something and carving down into the back.
Another one, for people comfortable carving towards themselves, is resting the butt of the spoon on your belly and carving backwards.
Step 7 – Smoothing Out Your Spoon
With the handle complete there are a couple of things you can do from here. The first option is to focus on the little ridges and deformities of your spoon and try to smooth it out with your knife, doing really fine carving. This is the method I prefer for my spoons, but I have been carving for a while and it takes a lot of knife control to get things perfect. If you decide to go with this method skip to step eight.
NOTE: Some of you may have noticed that the spoon shown above is different than the one I have been working on for the rest of this post. Well… There was a slight problem during the carving process. Namely the handle cracked. That just proves even more that MISTAKES HAPPEN no matter how many spoons you have carved.
The second option is to let your wood dry out a bit and then coming back and sanding it. Whatever way you choose is up to you, but let me tell you something. A LOT OF BEGINNERS think that sanding is going to fix all of their problems, that with sandpaper all the holes and tear outs and fuzz are going to disappear. This is true TO AN EXTENT. Only if you spend about twice the amount of time sanding as you did carving and use proper grits of sandpaper. A saying that I like to use is: five minutes carving saves you an hour of sanding. This may be an exaggeration but it highlights the fact that using sand paper to smooth out your spoon is HARD.
Since most of you will go the route of sanding here is what you need to know.
Let your spoon dry for about A WEEK OR TWO OUT OF DIRECT SUNLIGHT, as the sunlight may cause the wood to crack. Drying your spoon will prevent the sap and tree juices from clogging up your sandpaper and making you frustrated. Then go out and buy yourself some sandpaper. You’re going to need a couple different grits ranging from coarse to fine. I would recommend buying something like one pack of 80 grit, another of 120 grit, another of 220 grit, another of 320 grit and one more of 400 grit. Some brands will have packs of sandpaper with a variation of grits which will be cheaper and therefore better. Just make sure you get the right grits in this pack.
Now that you have your sandpaper its time to begin sanding. Take out your dried spoon and some 80 grit sandpaper and get going. This process is going to take a while so just be patient. Sand with 80 grit until you’re spoon is smooth all over. This means there aren’t any starts of tear outs, any unusually large divots, or any ridges.
NOTE: For the sake of time I switched spoons again. I just didn’t want to wait two weeks for the spoon we carved to dry.
Once your at that point switch to 120 grit and sand until all the eighty grit scratches are gone.
Once your at that point switch to 220 grit and do the same thing.
Continue like this until you’re done sanding with 400 grit. At this point you should have successfully spent two times as much time sanding as carving. Oh, and your spoon is ready to be for the finish.
Step 8 – Applying Finish
With your spoon all smoothed up, using whichever method you chose, it is time to apply the finish. For all people who skipped sanding you need to let your spoon dry for a week or two before doing this.
There are several different ways to finish a wooden spoon but most of them include some kind of oil. One way I used to finish my spoons was coating them with hot olive oil and baking them in the oven. Since then I have found a better way. It comes in the form of MINERAL OIL.
Mineral oil is great for finishing your spoons, mainly because it is easily accessible and really cheap. It is also really easy to use since all you have to do is apply it, and then wipe it off.
The only downside is that you do have to reapply oil every now and then, which should be easy since mineral oil only costs 1.98 at Walmart.
Image source: Here
Other fancier spoon finishing oils are linseed (AKA flax-seed) and walnut oil. With these oils you need to apply several coats at the beginning as well as maintain the spoons, like with mineral oil. You can purchase this oils of of Amazon.
Image source: Here
Finally you can apply a wax finish to your spoon. With wax you really have to be committed as it is really hard to remove from the spoon if you want to try a different finish. Wax can also be purchased on Amazon.
Image source: Here
Once the finish is applied your spoon is DONE!
Conclusion
Hopefully you have now created your first spoon, and I am very proud of you if you have. But if you failed in some way during this process DON’T GIVE UP. If you’ve read my About Me page you know how my first spoon looked. It was straight up awful. And you know what? I just kept on going, making as many spoons as I could. After countless attempts I made a good looking a functional utensil. All that happened because I didn’t throw in the towel and say “this is too hard” or “I’m not meant for this”.
Since then spoon carving has become one of my favorite things to do, and I hope that it will become one of yours as well. The question is: Will you push through?