The knife slices as I pull my hands apart, with the action coming from my upper chest and back. The cut ends with my elbows sticking straight out and the knife and spoon have both moved out and away from each other. Control your cut by holding it one-handed, thumb on the workpiece.Do not leave too much wood where the handle meets the bowl. The bottom of the bowl should dip down below the line of the handle, and the handle should be either straight or curved downward slightly.
I just kept going back and forth from the handle to the bowl to get it closer to the shape I was looking for. I made some kerf cuts with a handsaw along the side of the blank, stopping where I wanted the handle to be. This worked, but didn’t leave such a clean cut, you could still see the stepped lines from the router bit. Running even a smaller-scale event like this – one day instead of three, about 75 attendees instead of 125 – still requires a lot of setup and breakdown. One by one our instructors trickled in; and it’s always a highlight of our year when we get to spend so much time with our far-flung friends.
One of the really special things about urban trees is that they all exist because someone wanted them there. Either a person planted it, or they let a young sapling mature. The decision to remove a mature tree can be tough. The tree might be in declining health, or it’s starting to damage property.
Steve Schuler is a professor of English at an Alabama liberal arts college and an amateur woodworker who works almost entirely with hand tools. The more efficient a carver you become, the better you will be at taking micro breaks. Put the tool down while you consider your next cuts, shaking out your hands after some precise shavings. The most commonly overused technique is the thumb push/pivot grip with the sloyd knife. It’s a very safe, very accurate but not at all powerful.I always like to carve out the bowl of the spoon first because it is easy to clamp down at this point. I don’t like to use templates, I just let the wood determine what shape the spoon will be. There’s other views below, showing the shape, particularly of the crook. Here, she’s showing wooden spoon blanks the 7 blanks she just split out of this one quarter section of black birch. She squeezes out a lot of spoons from a small section of wood. We got done in time to bring in some green wood & distribute some drawknives so everyone could test-drive their creation under Tim’s direction.These are for sale, if you’d like one, leave a comment and I’ll set up a paypal invoice for you. Learn the techniques for carving spoons with hand tools, the characteristics and types of wood, and the care and sharpening of the tools, as well as different design and finishing exercises. Beyond the final object, carving wood is an almost meditative practice that will make you connect with your own hands while freeing your mind and learning something new. A day-to-day spoon is an especially handy item to make, and it’s the perfect way to begin your journey down the whittling wormhole. But it can be a lot of fun making spatulas, butter knives, ladles, and even diminutive salt spoons.
