I used wood from the same honey Locust limb for this spoon as for the simple mallet, compound mallet, and coat hanger. At the risk of rendering it not quite useless enough, it seemed like the handle end wanted to be a spatula, so I went with it. It’s big. It’s ugly. It’s nearly useless. It’s ... a Spoontula.
Ash Glamour Shot, The stout piece of grain on the right was cleaved.
I was considering combining them into a compound mallet, but both pieces are green so that would have been a fail I guess.
Roughing tools
Actually ended up using a thin chisel to gouge the bowel and a straight blade Stanley knife for the fine work.
Honestly no way to improve the bowel at this stage without some blade with a curve to it. Which I just don't have at the moment.
Learning see. Paul was right.
I will be coming back to this spoon and improving the finish when I obtain the correct equipment and it has dried a tad.
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ash selected for spoon carving
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shaping wooden spoon
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tools for roughing out wooden spoon
Perpetual Growth Regenerative Horticulture. Grow in peace.
Tried staring with Saskatoon... that was a bad idea! No wonder it's used for tool handles.
Next I used Mountain Ash.
Started with the hatchet...
Moved to the chisel...
Finished using the knife.
Tried the rock sanding methods
Perry & Spoon!
Depth of spoon.
Struggled to get the base any narrower. I kept clipping the shaft and making it narrower and narrower and I was afraid to break the handle. Wood did not want to carve/shake in the other direction.
I finally finished carving my spoon. This was wood from the trunk of our Christmas tree this year. My best guess is it Douglas Fir wood.
I started with a very dull knife I had laying around, and upgraded to a slightly less dull knife and a spoon carving knife (beaver craft).
I had to take several breaks from the project since early December, and I kept the wood submerged in water to keep the wood moist. Doing that also wound up removing quite a lot of oil/sap from the wood.
Now it doesn't taste like I'm eating Christmas trees when I test it.
The final spoon is lighter than I expected. Light can shine through some of the bowl, I hope that isn't a bad thing...
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Original wood
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Partway through, on pause (I
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Keep going!
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Almost Final spoon, final tools
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Rigorous testing, that
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Trying to show the bowl depth better
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Measuring thickness in the bowl, fingers make decent calipers
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Decent handfeel, deliberately canted for a lefty (myself)
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Tried the rock sanding, it rocked!
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Final spoon, unless I go buy sandpaper, I'm not sure there's much more to take off.