Salad spoon project

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14
Location
Los Angeles, CA
Hi all,
I have been practicing carving some wooden spoons using my grab box of basswood and have decided that I would like to try to make a nice set of salad spoons. I would like to use a wood that is more figured and colorful than basswood. I do not have access to a band saw and have been using a drawknife to shape out my practice spoons. Would using something like cherry or maple to hard for hand carving? Will I need to use mallet and chisels? I saw a nice piece of spalted maple at Woodcraft today and was wondering if spalted woods cause issues in carving. Is there any toxicity issues using spalted materials?

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Very nice spoon, Dennis. :thumb: I'll let the experienced carvers chime in about how easy or hard it is to carve the woods you listed.

Regarding the spalting, some people refuse to use spalted wood for food-related pieces, and other folks don't think there's a risk, especially if the piece has been finished with a membrane finish like shellac, lacquer, or polyurethane. Personally, I don't worry about it.
 
Howdy Dennis,

Nice looking spoon alright! They're addictive aren't they :)

Maple is generally harder than cherry (depending on the sub species of each) both carve fairly nice though. The cherry will be a bit lighter in the hand and the maple will mostly be a smidge more durable. Both will make spoons that can be used and loved for years.

Generally speaking if you can get green wood to carve you'll enjoy it a whole lot more, at least for the roughing out stages. A lot of spoon carvers basically finish them, let they dru and then take a few super thin shavings off just to make them pretty. This isn't too say carving dry wood is impossible, its just a fair bit more work. Mostly I've used dry wood because I have it in hand, but the green wood addiction is incipient.

As far as tooling, you can definitely do them with just a knife as it looks like you've been doing. For roughing the bowl a gouge and mallet is a bit faster though, even some of the green wood carvers use a gouge and mallet to start. It's mostly a time invested thing so no you don't NEED the extra tooling, you'll likely eventually want it if you do very many. You have to take smaller shavings with the harder wood so it's a fair bit slower.

The big problem for me with spalted wood for spoons is that I like to take mine fairly thin and is hard to know how progressed the spalting is in any given spot as it's basically semi controlled rot. It's pretty frustrating to be 80% don't with a spoon and then you find out there was an advanced pocket right where the bowl meets the handle or right smack in the middle of the bowl there's a big punky spot. If it's really light and pretty I'll chance it, but if you're looking for spoon wood initially I'd recommend sticking with mostly knot free and relatively straight grained (unless the grain follows a curve you want in the spoon then even better) woods to minimize the frustration level and optimize success. Once you've done a bunch and failure doesn't seem quite so costly as you've already gotten past the mechanics is when I'd say branch out to more problematic woods.

Side note on initial shaping, I've been cheating and using a bandsaw because I have one handy, but I've seen folks who were faster than me by a LOT using a small hatchet. Basically the lighter the better for this it seems. So keep your eye open at yard and estate sales for a small hatchet and don't worry about the bandsaw unless you want it for other reasons ;). The more acute the blade profile the better for the hatchet so try to avoid the crappy wood splitter wedge shaped ones (they more often have a softer metal/temper as well and you'll want to take this to a razor edge).
 
I find cherry easier to work than maple, on the lathe. Ash and butternut are also good choices for the lathe. Maple tends to beat the carp out of my tools, except something like "wormy soft maple" which works well.

You could enter some spoons into the swap that's going on. They look very nice.
 
Nice spoons! I have to say this about spalted wood. The spalting is a fungus. Some folks are more sensitive to these things than others, so for food related products, I would avoid it because I couldn't be sure that at some point someone who couldn't tolerate it would come in contact with it. Just sayin'....
 
I did a little looking on google for stabilized wood used for spoons and couldn't find anyone doing it. I think stabilizing spalted wood with something like cactus juice would let you carve thin with confidence, but dunno whether that spoon would be functional for stirring hot stuff.
 
Thank you everyone for the input. I have been slammed at work recently but I can not wait to get back to carving some spoons...I think it is safe to say that I am addicted to carving spoons. I post some pics as they are completed. What is the swap?
 
Drew out my general idea for this project. Hopefully my enthusiasm hasn't pushed me to bite off more than I can chew.

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:thumb: My most fun projects have been when I bit off way more than I could chew. Cool design idea, I think it'll look darn good once done!

I might thin the handle down a smidge, especially towards the bowl - if you transition the wood from flatter to taller (side to side to front to back) you can get a smoother look without loosing any strength. Similarly transition to a slightly narrower profile right before the rose will allow the rose to stand out more. I also suspect that you'll regret the leaves around the rose, they'll be delicate and difficult to make look good from both sides, similarly I think you could get away with simplifying the internals of the rose bit and have more visual impact at this size but most of that is fixable as you go.

I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of lightly photoshopping your picture to be more what I was thinking of shape wise, its not quite right as the transitions could be eased a bit more and I perhaps went a bit farther on the thinning than is desirable (the thin part would be better moved further towards the bowl as well) but gets the general gist anyway. It would be easier with a pencil and a set of curves but I wanted to preserve some of your detailing :D
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Ryan...Thanks for photoshopping my drawing. I see what you mean about adding the additional curves to the spoon. It is more pleasing to the eye. As for the rose I will probably omit the leafs. Today I began practicing the rose in relief and I am really looking forward to begin carving on a harder wood. I saw some Birch today while I was walking around Home Depot and will being to try carving on that.

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