Thinking of Spooncarving

Matthew Lau · Post by **Matthew Lau** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:57 am

My periodontist buddy has been talking to me about the joys of spoon carving.

Anyone try this?
Any tips?

I'm thinking of getting into this since:
1. It takes less tooling than guitars.
2. A lot of friends have/will have babies.
3. It's more socially acceptable than knitting here.
4. I'd really like a wooden super spork to give to friends.

Mattia Valente · Post by **Mattia Valente** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:56 am

Try wood turning.

It's kind of like crack when your 'normal' woodworking projects (= guitars) involve 100+ hours of cutting, planing, sanding, scraping and fiddling with tiny details. I bought a cheapie lathe on a whim, and I'm not really any good or all that experienced (few pens, couple of bowl/jewelery box type things), but you get to use a lot of the random scraps of exotics and fancy wood that are too small for guitars. The best thing is that once you're set up, you can end up with a completed project, starting with a hunk of wood and ending with something that has a finish on it (shellac applied to spinning workpiece works well, as does tru oil, or wax. Particularly after 'polishing' with micromesh) within a very, very short time. I think my pens take me about 10-15 minutes to make. Plus they make great little gifts

Although a giant super spork sounds AWESOME.

Steve Senseney · Post by **Steve Senseney** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 9:24 am

I have made a lot of spoons, but no sporks!

My method--draw a outline on the chunk of wood from the face view, and cut out the general shape on the band saw.

Draw and nicely shaped side view on the side, and cut with the band saw.

I made a "cutter" by taking a bolt, using a hack saw to cut a slot in the top of the bolt head, soldering a piece of band saw blade into the slot, and making this into a rounded shape. Sharpen the edge, and use this to rough out the bowl of the spoon.

After bulking out the bowl of the spoon, use chisels, scrapers with a curved surface, files, sand paper etc, to finish the spoon.

I am at work now, but I will try to post a picture of the tool later.

Steve Senseney · Post by **Steve Senseney** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 7:02 pm

Here are a couple of tools that I found as I looked through my stuff--

: Small reamers.JPG (16.37 KiB) Viewed 8480 times

Steve Senseney · Post by **Steve Senseney** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 7:06 pm

And spoons, and scoops. (I saw the pattern in an old movie. I think this was "The Magnificent Seven". It was supposed to be in a small Mexican village. I have no idea if they are actually a common item in Mexican culture or not, or if it was just for the movie.)