Carving a simple spoon

Hi good morning guys thanks for joining me, hope everyone's well, hope everyone's having a nice week and as I mentioned in the last video I did say I'll be back down in the woods and also doing a little bit about spoon carving. So that being said I brought out a little bit of wood with me, I thought we'd just run through the kind of woods which it is that I like to use. I've also brought out a selection of tools we can also run through that. What I thought we'd do is just carve out just a quick small to medium sized spoon, something perfect for a little teaspoon or perhaps an 18 spoon something like that. With the weather forecast as it is today they have forecast quite a bit of rain, these kind of projects are perfect certainly if you are away in camp for a couple of days and you're going to be stuck under the tarp it just means then you've got something to do and the end result is a nice finished spoon. So the wood which I thought we'd use today, we're doing a little bit of bank work yesterday and I've actually got myself here a couple of nice pieces of sycamore. This is one of the things which I like to do if I'm cleaning any of the trees away from around the lakes or the rivers or perhaps just cleaning the paths in general instead of discarding these throwing them off to one side or perhaps burning them, it's nice just to take them home like I say and turn them into something useful. So the wood selection is sycamore, it is important obviously when you're selecting your wood to make sure that the wood is non-toxic and just like this selection of spoons which I brought out with me again all these are non-toxic and when you carve sycamore it is a nice wood to use, you do get this nice light coloured wood referred to as blonde and also just with the rest of the spoons which I've got here I've also got one which I've carved out of birch, again an awesome wood when it comes to carving spoons and also a spoon there carved out of alder. Now when it comes to using alder, again a perfect wood for carving, non-toxic, it's also reported never to rot and this was a wood traditionally used by farmers who used to make clogs out of it just like the Dutch do. With this kind of method of carving your spoons you can go from anything from a small little teaspoon like I mentioned all the way to the larger serving spoons and it's all carved out in exactly the same kind of manner. But before we get into the carving I thought I'd quickly just run through the kind of tools which we're going to be using, I've got the carving tools here which is the little spoon knife or the hoop knife, I've also brought out Ben Alford's English sluice knife but any carving knife will do, the motor carving knives are very good but this was a recent purchase so I wanted to try this. You're going to need some kind of saw when it comes to harvesting the wood in the first place whether that be a lapwander but my preferred saw is the sulky pocket boy. I've also got this other little saw here, again if it says I want to do any kind of finishing cuts but I don't want any saw marks on the wood and these very fine teeth on these flexible, I think it's a coping saw but always worth having and then some way of just keeping the knife sharp just whilst you're doing the carving I just brought out a little CC4 and also a little stropping kit, a pencil just so we can draw just the design of the spoon in the first place and then just a little tin of wax here this is beeswax and walnut oil which we're going to condition the wood with once we've finished but just be aware you know if you're going to be making spoons for other people and if you're using things like walnut oil you know just be careful that people don't have any kind of nut allergies with that being said if that person does then things like mineral oil or olive oil another good way to go. So once you split your wood in two it's just a case of deciding which part or which section it is that I want to use just looking at that they both look pretty straight they've both got very minimal knots I'm probably just going to go with the thinner section there it just means I've got to carve away less wood like I mentioned the beauty about splitting the wood in two there's very little chance now without actually splitting or cracking as it dries compared to if I just show you an example there if you just keep the wood in the round you can just see there as it dries and the wood starts to shrink that it does actually crack but the large serving spoon which I've shown you just a little bit earlier actually carved out of this around about a month ago and once that wood has actually been splitting off there's very little chance and it's actually cracking down on the ends so like I say once you've cracked or split that wood down you can carve it and once that wood's dry you can pretty much use it straight away you don't have to worry about keeping the wood moist or keeping it in oil anything like that it's just a faster approach when it comes to using the spoon once it's actually been carved. So the first thing we're going to do we're going to remove the bark I'm just going to get rid of this pith line that just runs down the center there then we can start drawing the spoon design on it and making a start with the carving. Okay so once that's been cleaned up you've got rid of the line you've got rid of the bark you've just got to decide which part is going to be the bowl and which part we need to be the handle and there's a pretty much a standard kind of size a lot of people like to go a third bowl two thirds handle so what I'm going to do now is just have a look if there's any differences either side and then what we're going to do we're going to go from two thirds down we're going to cut away quite a bit of this material here just to thin down just a section for the handle and I'm going to turn the wood over and just cut down one third which is just going to give us a nice little recess where the bowl is going to be and then like I say we just start putting the markings on and then just get a bit more intricate with the carving and just use the smaller knife and as you can see there I've just started just to get just a little bit of a shape of the spoon you can just see how I've carved the material away and there's just a little bit of a step up just where the hand's going to go or where your finger's going to go I like using the larger piece of wood where you can actually get a nice definite crank out of it these spoons are pretty much referred to as a flat spoon because the shape of it does run pretty much flat so once we've got it to that kind of state now we've got a bit of a recess there where the bowl is going to be like we've removed the material we can just use the pencil now and just start just by designing the shape of your spoon so the first thing that I want to do is just find the center point we can just run just a quick line down there just to indicate where the center is going to be I just want to mark off that third again just to make things just a little bit easier to judge and also get the dimensions I'm not the best artist in the world your spoons never usually turn out exactly like the drawing is but we're just going to get just some kind of crude spoon shape just on there and then we can work out the thickness of the handle or what we're looking for and there's just a rough crude design and the first thing I'm going to do just by using the hook knife I'm just going to make a start on the bowl and then what I like to do I just remove bits as and when I'm carving some people have a set structure they like to do the ball first or the handle first I'm just one of them kind of people I'll do a little bit on the ball a little bit on the handle and just see how it's going from there so like I say in the hook knife that we're going to be using is one of Ben Orford's I do like these hook knives you haven't got that aggressive point on the front of it razor sharp and now you've got to like I say one of the strops with me so I can actually just keep that nice and sharp when he says if you're doing any kind of carving now the blade itself does look unusual if you've never used one before what you've got to do is imagine that blade being straight then it's just been curved over and Ben's actually got rid of that point just to stop things from digging in as it is when you're carving and if you want to keep the cuts nice and shallow you start off with the back section and then the deeper the cuts need to be you just transfer over and just use that tip section to get really deep so we're going to use it to cross grain it doesn't work too well with the grain I sometimes find that 45 degrees you know works really well this one here has a right handy duke knife so I can use it just in that direction if I want to turn the wood over I'll be able to get to the other side but what a lot of people do they would have a left and right handed or they'd use a double bit where you can actually just either carve away in one direction and the other but say I've got a left handy duke knife in the bag but I perhaps say that 90% of the time I just use this right handy duke knife so I'm just going to start off nice and gentle just holding this just against my knee I'm just going to start removing just small little sections away and one way we're to do like to hold it is referred to as the open grip or the open fist it just means then as you close that fist up you get that rotating action which actually carves away you know the wood for you so like I say just taking this time making sure that that thumb is always out of the way we don't want to cut into the thumb and just making sure that we don't go over the line and one way which a lot of people say helps you can actually just hold the piece just against the leg and you can actually twist checking that the depth is even you don't want to go too deep you don't want to bore a hole all the way through because we've also got to start removing some material from this other side so once you're happy that you've got quite a bit of depth in there I'm just going to use the just the carving knife now I'm just going to start cutting away just meeting up with some of these lines and then just removing some of this material from the back here just so that we can start shaping the back of the bowl obviously taking a time it's far easier to remove this material and try putting it back on there's various different grips which we're going to be using a lot of people say don't cut towards yourself but just as long as you keep everything tucked in one of the nice safe cuts that we can use is actually just drawing that knife back up towards us and then it helps just to cut in there and just give us any kind of shape that we need sometimes you're going to have to meet up with the cut so you may cut back in one direction and then to clean it off you may have to come back down and use the knife just to meet up with the cut but that's all dependent on the grain you know in the the way that you want to carve the knife out so just taking a time I'm just going to work my way around I just want to shape just the back of this bowl like I'm saying and also just meeting up with this line that we've actually drawn just on the front here so when it comes to using the knife obviously it's going to take just a little bit longer than perhaps using the hatchet all I'm trying to do here is just shape just the back of the bowl and probably the most awkward part is actually just doing the front of the bowl just removing all that material from underneath there just take a little bit of time a little bit of work but you know once it gets there you can then just carve and just meet these lines and as you can see there that's the ball just starting to be formed so after around about 10 or 15 minutes worth of work you can just see there now that the bowl has started to take shape I'm just starting just to work on the neck a little bit here and then what we're going to start doing now is actually carving and meeting up with these lines so again I'm just going to put the piece of work just into my chest I'm just going to slowly just draw everything back towards us and start cutting out or carving out the shape of where the handle is going to be so just be careful that you don't take off too much material just a little bit at a time I'm just going to slowly just remove some of about half an hour 40 minutes that's the rough shape of the spoon carved out I was just checking there that the bowl was even it's just a little bit thicker just in that part there so I'm just going to remove just a little bit of material and if you wanted to you could call that done but with it being an eating spoon I'm just going to be just a quick sand over just get rid of any kind of tool marks just out of the bowl there just so when you clean it you're not going to get food and everything stuck in it's going to feel a bit more comfortable in the mouth so the sandpaper that we're going to be using is just normal sandpaper but this is 180 so not too coarse not too fine also what it may help me do is just get rid of these little bits here these little anger honors that I couldn't quite cut off and with this sycamore growing quite quick this time of year you sometimes find that the wood just goes a little bit like this you know just down to that nature so not too much sanding also the friction from the sandpaper will just dry the timber out just a little bit quicker that means that we can get the I just thought to give you just a quick close-up just in the sun there all them tool markings have now gone nice and smooth dimensions aren't too bad so we got there like I mentioned a third for the ball and two-thirds for the handle very simple handle shape just tapered just so it goes just a bit fatter at the top nice and comfortable to hold and like I say take around about an hour and a half in total just moving the camera around and that kind of thing and it's not turned out too bad so like I mentioned first thing the wax and oil that we'll be using is this beeswax and walnut oil I found this very useful stuff and this is a wooden board conditioner available ebay amazon them kind of places and the beauty of it is it's nice and solid so you can carry it around with you you haven't got to worry you know about stuff leaking out in your bag and also like to do I just warm it up just start it melting and then give it a nice liberal coating all over and I've just checked that the wood was dry I just put it on my lip and it didn't feel too damp but you know if this wood was still damp I'd probably just leave it until the following day just before putting this on and just working it into the wood just let it absorb into the grain and what you'll notice is there's certain areas that will soak up the oil more than others it tends to be the end of the grain so things like the end of the spoon also where the grain's been cut there and also just on the back there where the handle is so what I sometimes do is just to apply just a bit more of the wax and the oil there knowing that it'll soak it up because come tomorrow you'll tend to find that these spots here are dry where it's absorbed and it's taken the wax and the oil further up into the grain but that should be enough there like I'm saying just working it in and then you could just leave that to soak in if you wanted or just get a rag and we'll just wipe off any of the excess well guys that's it for this one just a real quick one I like to carve these basic spoons certainly a nice little project if the weather's bad and you're stuck under the perhaps you've forgotten your cutlery set and you just need a quick makeshift spoon so like always you just seem to say thanks a lot for stopping by and watching the video like always until next time you take care and I'll see you again