How I make a simple spoon

Ryan Mooney

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The Gorge Area, Oregon
Somewhat inspired by Neds unfortunate day and Vaughn's superlative "how to make a bowl" threads (and also avoiding doing more yardwork.. mostly avoiding doing more yardwork.. :rofl:) I figured I'd do a "how to spoon" thread. Standard disclaimers about not everything I do being the best/smartest/fastest apply, so C&C welcome and if you have a different/better/interesting/whatever way of doing something please lay it out (I'd especially be interested in seeing one of them spoon planes in action, I'd never heard of them before today and searching youtube I find more videos of infants getting fed with a spoon "like a planee.. zooom" than actual spoon planes :rolleyes:).

Piece of scrap pear from the offcuts from my slabbing adventure/burn pile
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Really roughly roughed on the bandsaw. Cut off all of the split pieces and picked the thickest looking part. I leave the bowl side a bit long if I'm going to lathe it (which I will with this one just because why not). This was cut with the same 3/4" blade I had on for slabbing (cut/back out cut..) so not really any curves :D
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Roughed on the lathe. I used a 1/2" spindle gouge to turn down the bulk of the handle, a 1.25" skew to clean it up a smidge and a 5/8" bowl gouge to turn the edges off of the bowl. I like using the bowl gouge for cuts like this cause its less likely to catch and follows a curve pretty well.
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Still lots of bark on the back, I'll deal with that next.
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Cut off the nubbin and used a hand plane to knock the back kinda flat so I can carve the bowl next.
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Figuring out how to hold it here is the hard part. I have the bowl wedges between the square dog and the holdfast with the other holdfast on the handle. The handle sat a bit shy of the bench at the back so I shoved a wedge under it to keep it flat. This also shows the first pass of gouge cuts. This is the only part where I use a mallet on the gouge, I'll do ~6 more cuts sideways to knock out the first bit of waste.
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From there its all paring cuts. I use my close had as a leverage point to control the cut depth and my rear hand (not shown cause its taking the picture.. but normally it would be on the handle :D) as the driver. Basically here I'm just working around the bowl working it down. I find that using 1/4 - 1/2 the width of the chisel works better than trying to make to big of cuts in one pass (it could be the middle 1/2 though).
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Continues.
 
More paring cuts. Here I've raised a series of shavings and am preparing to cut them off. I took a lot of paring cut pictures, I'll spare you the rest of them :D
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I really need to get around to just putting some leather jaws on my vice :rolleyes:
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More paring cuts, again I use my close hand to control the cut depth and the rear hand to drive the chisel. Hint: take a stone and break the edges of the chisel or you'll have more of that red stuff contaminating your work problem.
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Check the thickness fairly often, I just use my fingers, exactly correct isn't critical, but you don't want to go through :D
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Controlling the cut depth/extent with my near hand, here I'm actually doing a "slicing" cut kind of towards the upper part of the picture.
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Clean it up the back with a file.
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Usually around here I decide that I need to cleanup the inside of the bowl a smidge. Yes that's a shaving, fine cuts here make sanding easier later.
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A little work on the handle, mostly bevel down paring work to get rid of the bark and shape it. I did the same on the flat on the other side.
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Sand 120 grit, 220 grit walnut oil saturate wait 5 and wipe off then 320 grit followed by another wick walnut oil wipe.
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Not my nicest or fastest (or nicest/fastest for that matter) spoon but not bad for a piece of firewood :D. Total time about 1:30 including time taking pictures.
 
Wow, I missed this before...thanks for sharing. I have a couple maple and basswood scraps that I have rough shaped that I need to get back too.
 
Thanks guys glad you enjoyed it.

Nice. Hmmm, A little longer and that would make a great mash stirrer.... :thumb:

They do at that :thumb: I actually have juuust enough length on my lathe w/o the extension on to do a decent mash paddle so I more often do those by hand (too short and they're a little hot to handle; around 36" total length is pretty good) although I did a couple on the lathe and they came out really nice. I also change the shape of the bowl to have a squarer business end so it can get into the corner and a bit flatter (somewhat more of a paddle shape if you will :D).

I actually left the handle a bit thicker than I normally would on this one, I didn't want to get half way through taking pictures and have it snap on me :rolleyes: I like handles maybe 1/2 - 2/3 this thick in proportion to the spoon.
 
What wood do you use for your mash paddles? Just curious.

Whatever is on hand mostly :D

My main criteria for any spoon wood are:
  • not poisonous, so definitely no yew or anything like that. Pretty much anything with a skull and X bones here http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/wood-allergies-and-toxicity/ is off of the list (although I continue to disagree on the sassafrass being all that bad...) and the more aggressive skin allergens wouldn't be on my list.
  • not to porous so crud doesn't get caught in the holes
  • not overly hard to work cause I'm lazy, although a bit of an error towards harder makes a nicer spoon.
  • For a mash paddle I'd also avoid anything with significant oil or flavor/odor to it (although you can largely fix that with a few boiling water cleanings, why bother).
  • obviously avoid resinous or pitch pocket wood

Practically speaking for mash paddles I have direct experience using:
  • Oak. Somewhat porous imho but if you have a piece with relatively finer grain its fine. I wouldn't use red for that reason, only white.
  • Alder. Carves up easy (doesn't take detail well though and I wouldn't go to "refined" or thin on any of the parts ) but has a tendency to fuzz a bit in use. If you let it dry well and gently take ~320-400 grit to it after the first few uses it mostly stops. I've made a fair number out of this because I had a lot of scraps.
  • Hickory. A bit of a pita to work with, but it sure makes a nice final product. My favorite paddles I've made so far have been from hickory.

For other spoons I've also used:
  • Lilac. Wow what a wonderful wood to carve. You can go almost paper thin and its still quite strong and very pretty. Good luck getting any (My mom had a big one get undercut by the creek so I salvaged it and am sure glad I did).
  • Olive. This would be my second favorite so far for a kitchen spoon (never had a big enough piece to do a mash paddle :D), really really nice result.
  • Maple (hard and soft). carves well, watch the curves in the grain, they'll get you on the carving. This would make a nice paddle as well.
  • Mahogany. I don't know if it was "real mahogany" or not, kinda looks like the grain is to fine, so I'm thinking no. Still looks pretty nice (only one decorative spoon so far).
  • Walnut, looks nice, I mean its walnut.. so .. yep.
  • beach and birch. Both are nice, cut pretty well. Birch is slightly tighter grained usually I think so it makes a nicer kitchen spoon imho.

I have some lyptus I've been tempted to use (it would be pretty pretty), but I've avoided it because of the flavor concern.
 
Whatever is on hand mostly :D

My main criteria for any spoon wood are:
  • not poisonous, so definitely no yew or anything like that. Pretty much anything with a skull and X bones here http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/wood-allergies-and-toxicity/ is off of the list (although I continue to disagree on the sassafrass being all that bad...) and the more aggressive skin allergens wouldn't be on my list.
  • not to porous so crud doesn't get caught in the holes
  • not overly hard to work cause I'm lazy, although a bit of an error towards harder makes a nicer spoon.
  • For a mash paddle I'd also avoid anything with significant oil or flavor/odor to it (although you can largely fix that with a few boiling water cleanings, why bother).
  • obviously avoid resinous or pitch pocket wood

Practically speaking for mash paddles I have direct experience using:
  • Oak. Somewhat porous imho but if you have a piece with relatively finer grain its fine. I wouldn't use red for that reason, only white.
  • Alder. Carves up easy (doesn't take detail well though and I wouldn't go to "refined" or thin on any of the parts ) but has a tendency to fuzz a bit in use. If you let it dry well and gently take ~320-400 grit to it after the first few uses it mostly stops. I've made a fair number out of this because I had a lot of scraps.
  • Hickory. A bit of a pita to work with, but it sure makes a nice final product. My favorite paddles I've made so far have been from hickory.

For other spoons I've also used:
  • Lilac. Wow what a wonderful wood to carve. You can go almost paper thin and its still quite strong and very pretty. Good luck getting any (My mom had a big one get undercut by the creek so I salvaged it and am sure glad I did).
  • Olive. This would be my second favorite so far for a kitchen spoon (never had a big enough piece to do a mash paddle :D), really really nice result.
  • Maple (hard and soft). carves well, watch the curves in the grain, they'll get you on the carving. This would make a nice paddle as well.
  • Mahogany. I don't know if it was "real mahogany" or not, kinda looks like the grain is to fine, so I'm thinking no. Still looks pretty nice (only one decorative spoon so far).
  • Walnut, looks nice, I mean its walnut.. so .. yep.
  • beach and birch. Both are nice, cut pretty well. Birch is slightly tighter grained usually I think so it makes a nicer kitchen spoon imho.

I have some lyptus I've been tempted to use (it would be pretty pretty), but I've avoided it because of the flavor concern.

That's some great info right there. I made a pretty crude one out of maple. At about 3/4" thick, the handle was a little 'soft' and flexible.

I bet Hickory would make a great paddle...
 
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