The People Have Spoken

What good is a wooden eating spoon?

If you ask the people who frequented my Etsy shop since its inauguration two weeks ago, not much. So far among the tally of items sold: cooking/serving spoons – 10, eating spoons – 0.

Redbay eating spoon.

It’s a bit of a shock to the system for an old spoon carver like myself. I’ve surrounded myself with an Instagram feed and Facebook Groups that include a daily abundance of carved spoons. I’d estimate that 90% or more of the spoons that I see on social media are eating spoons.

It makes sense if you’re a carver. Cooking and serving spoons are big. They take at least two or three times as long to carve as an eating spoon, and they take up a commensurate quantity of space in the kitchen. Once you get the spoon carving bug, you’ll probably start out with a few cooking spoons before quickly realizing that they’re going to consume every junk drawer in the kitchen if you don’t start giving some away. Sure, a few of the prized specimens will remain in the vase on the counter meant for oft-used utensils, but you’ll quickly settle on your favorites and the rest will stored in a dark corner, forgotten and forlorn.

Eating spoons, on the other hand, take up little of both your time and space. You can turn out a rather nice one in an hour or two. Unlike cooking spoons, for which a single spoon will suffice to prepare and serve an entire meal for the family, eating spoons are used in quantity. They’re cheap to ship and easy to carry to swap meets, so they make a convenient currency among spoon carvers. Most spoon carvers, therefore, will quickly switch from carving cooking spoons to mostly eating spoons.

But we forget, sometimes, how strangely the rest of the world views us and our wooden eating spoon habit. I know, sometimes it seems as though the whole world is carving spoons, but trust me: That’s just another social media bubble that we’ve created. “Normal” people think wooden eating spoons are weird. Eating spoons should be metal. They should stack neatly in a flatware tray, not lovingly displayed on a wall rack. They should have shiny polished bowls, not gently faceted surfaces from the hook knife. To “normal” people, the wooden eating spoon elicits imagery of a peasant sipping watery porridge from a communal bowl. It’s a relict of a bygone era.

The wooden cooking spoon, meanwhile, reminds people of grandma’s chicken and dumplings. Or grandpa’s peanut brittle. It feels nostalgic, but not antiquated.

The irony, of course, is that many of the most talented and creative contemporary woodworkers I know are spoon carvers. Check out the work of Maryanne, Amy, or Adam if you don’t believe me. My own work may not compare to theirs, but I can tell you that few things bring me as much joy as eating a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream with a little birch spoon that I carved for myself at Greenwood Fest three years ago.

Honestly, I think a wooden eating spoon is a bit like good beer or bourbon: You probably won’t like it the first time you try it, but if you’re motivated to like it, it’ll soon be one of those simple pleasures in life that you’re not likely to want to give up (and unlike beer or bourbon, you’ll not find yourself half-naked and surrounded by empties in the back of a pickup truck if you have one too many wooden spoons). Geez, I’m a terrible salesman. To conclude this subtle sales pitch, my little menagerie of eating spoons are patiently awaiting new owners. I’m rather proud of them. I think you’ll enjoy them as much as I do if you give them an honest try. But I must confess, I doubt if I’ll be carving many more. As far as I’m concerned, the people have already spoken.

A Revelation

One of the reasons I was most looking forward to Greenwood Fest was for the opportunity to look over Dave Fisher’s shoulder as he did some letter-carving. Dave is a maestro at this work (for example, here, here and here). He has even done a blog post specifically about lettering. But a blog just didn’t quite give me the confidence to try it – I wanted to see it in action.

To be honest, I have tried letter-carving in the past, but I was never particularly happy with the results. In fact, I actually carved my initials into the very first spoon I ever carved, six years ago in 2010. I had no sloyd or spoon knives at that point. I carved the whole thing with a gouge and a drawknife, and then I carved the letters with a chisel. The spoon is quite good – I still use it every week:

Despite being made from a soft, open-pored wood (catalpa), this thing still does an admirable job of scooping mashed potatoes onto a plate.

And the letters are neat enough, but also pretty bland and lifeless. Not something I really want to showcase on all of my spoons:

I didn’t try to carve letters again for three more years. When my first son was born in 2013, he spent nine days in the NICU. There wasn’t much that I could do for him, but could carve a spoon for him. I decided to try carving letters again. By this point, I had proper spoon-carving knifes, so I attempted to do the letters with the tip of my sloyd knife. The sentiment was laudable, but the execution was not. It’s the thought that counts?

Sweet sentiment, sloppy execution. Sorry, Elam.

Anyway, after that I was pretty much ruined on letter-carving until I had some proper instruction. After quizzing Dave about his tools, techniques, and unspoken wisdom, I was ready to give it another go. The biggest takeaway? A knife with a short blade and a rather tight radius near the tip seems to be mission-critical. He uses the tip of a pen knife. I had this little guy which seems to be close to the proper geometry:

The radius of the tip could be a little tighter, but it’s a lot better than a sloyd knife.

After sketching a simple design that I liked, I did my best to follow the lines, being careful not to cut too deeply (but also not being too timid either. No need to go over the same cut five times to get to the proper depth). Long, flowing lines like this were actually pretty easy to execute. It’s the stopping and starting that makes it tough!

Elam’s new spoon: a significant improvement.

I was pretty pleased with how Elam’s new spoon turned out, but the cursive lettering was tricky. I highly recommend starting with all-caps font. Straight lines are a lot more fun than tight curves. It might be impolite when sending emails to your co-workers, but it’s perfectly acceptable to shout on a spoon.

My daughter’s spoon turned out even better.

I was on a roll, so I decided to keep going. I carved a quick spoon while I was at Greenwood Fest and ate with it all week. Peter Follansbee made it “famous” on his first blog post after the event (sixth picture from the top). In honor of its provenance, I decided to give the spoon an appropriate name:

So now I have a new skill that I’m not altogether embarrassed about. Score one for the home team, and Tip o’ the Hat to you, Dave Fisher.

The Best Spoon I’ve Ever Seen.

I’ve mentioned a time or two the greenwoodworking group on Facebook. It took a few days to get adjusted to the barrage of spoons and other woodcrafts on my newsfeed, but my brain quickly started making connections between certain craftspeople and the work that they produced. One name that kept popping up repeatedly alongside gorgeously sculpted eating spoons was Derek Sanderson. I soon found myself looking at my own spoons, and I realized that they seemed quite dull and lifeless in comparison to his.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the same movement in the side profile that Derek has so clearly perfected. One can only learn so much from a picture, so I decided to order one of his spoons to see where the magic was. It arrived a couple of weeks later, and I was not disappointed. This little cherry spoon is a miniature sculpture, every little detail well-conceived and well-executed. It is, without question, The Best Spoon I’ve Ever Seen.

Let me lay out my argument. First, consider the top profile – very fluid and shapely, though it’s also the easiest part to get right. What’s not as easy to get right is the depth and shape of the bowl, but he nails this as well. It’s quite shallow but very comfortable, like a lollipop. I like how the heartwood/sapwood contrast splits the spoon in half – a very nicely chosen material.

The side profile is really what makes this spoon stand out. It is so active and organic – almost as if the neck is under tension. The lower curve nicely mimics the upper curve, though less dramatically. And look how cleanly the neck was shaved – since the grain reverses direction here, this is the toughest part of a spoon to cut cleanly. There isn’t a single raised fiber here, and this is completely knife-cut. No scraping or sanding.

The curve of the back is lovely and lightly faceted. The curve of the handle mimics the curve of the bowl, which makes it very comfortable to hold. It also makes the opposite ends of the spoon seem cohesive. I’m not sure how to say what I’m thinking, other than both ends “match” one another – they are variations on one shape. I’ve always used strong facets and straight lines on the back of my handles, but I realize now that it is just not as comfortable. I’m going to start trying some curved backs now.

There is even a little bit of flourish at the tip of the spoon – a bit of chip-carving just adds some individuality. Also notice the very subtle chamfers on the sides. Those flow uninterrupted around the whole spoon.

One final parting shot: compare Derek’s spoon, at top, to one of my spoons, below. I was very happy with my spoon until I looked at it alongside a superior example!

If I had but one criticism about this spoon, I would say that the bowl is just a tad wide. It’s fine for me, but I have a big mouth. I doubt the spoon would be as comfortable for my wife. That hasn’t been a problem, because I’m greedy and I’ve been keeping the spoon at my office to eat my oatmeal every morning. My family is stuck with my good-but-just-not-as-good eating spoons, I’m afraid.

I’m not connected with Derek in any way, other than as a satisfied customer. If you’d like to own one of these, you’ll have to get in touch with him on Facebook or on Instagram – I don’t believe he has a website (at least not that I could find).

 

The Birth of a Ladle

I was recently commissioned to carve a ladle for a good friend. I don’t carve ladles very frequently, because how many ladles does one man really need? (I think I have three in my kitchen, which is probably one too many). I was happy to fill the request. Ladles are the tougher to carve than a regular cooking spoon because of the sweeping curves and the deep bowl, but that also makes them fun. The best part is finding the right crook.

You can’t just carve a ladle from a straight piece of wood. You need to find a branch where the grain follows the handle, then curves abruptly where the bowl will be carved. Otherwise, you will end up with either a weak bowl or a weak handle.

You might be able to find a crook with the proper bend to it, but you’re more likely to find the abrupt bend that you need at a branch union. So the ladle begins with the hunt for a proper bend.

I had some red maple already cut up, and I picked out the bendiest piece that I had, but it wasn’t quite crooked enough. It will make a fine cooking/serving spoon, though.

A walk in the woods yielded a nice piece of redbay (Persea borbonia). Looks like it has a ladle in it to me. A close relative of avacado (Persea americana), this stuff carves beautifully – as long as you’re carving with the grain – but it does have some wicked grain reversals that can make it a challenge.

For most spoon blanks, I just split out what I need, but I’ve learned my lesson on Y’s. If you just try to split this out, chances are good that the bowl of your spoon blank will be destroyed. My method is to saw through the lower half of the blank until I get to straight wood.

Saw on the red line.

Then you can split the rest of the way using an axe, a wedge, or a froe with no problem.

I skipped a few steps at this point, but once you liberate your blank from the tree it’s just like carving any other spoon. A little axe work to remove most of the waste, then the rest is done with a sloyd knife and a bent knife and a lot of patience.

I finished this spoon up on my lunch break today. Here’s a few pictures. I can’t wait to deliver this ladle to its new owner. Mostly because I’ll be tempted to keep it myself if I don’t get rid of it soon. It’s quite a bit nicer than my earlier ladle efforts that I’m living with at the moment!

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A Lonely Craft

It’s an unusual treat for me to actually have the opportunity to hang out with a fellow woodworker. We’re a scarce bunch, I suppose. Rarer still is the elusive green woodworker – those who make spoons, bowls, chairs, chests, etc. starting from green logs rather than dried lumber. Actually, as of two weeks ago, I had never met another green woodworker.

A couple weeks ago, I joined a green woodworking Facebook group and took notice when one of the posters referred to Cumberland Island, GA as “right across the state line from me”. Cumberland Island is less than 3 miles from my home, just across the St. Mary’s River. Just where is this guy? I sent him a message and asked where he was from. Turns out there is a fellow green woodworker just 20 minutes down the road from me in Yulee, FL.

We made plans to meet up at my house to swap stories and carve spoons. He brought along some fine red maple and I picked out a great crook to work with. I got to try out some new spooncarving knives (I still don’t own a hook knife – just a couple of bent knives –  but using Joey’s convinced me to put a hook knife on my Christmas list).

He brought along some of his own spoons to show me, as well as some from carvers all over the world. I have only seen my own spoons in person – most of what I’ve learned is from the internet – so it was a thrill to discuss the different styles and forms with someone who really understands hand-carved spoons. I also found a willing ear to talk about my Windsor chair. I know my wife is tired of my blathering about it.

I love this craft, but it has definitely been a lonely one for me. The irony of that statement is that spooncarving has the potential to be one of the most social woodcrafts of all – it doesn’t require a shop, the tools are few, and the materials are free. I find few things more enjoyable than to sit outside on a nice day and chat while carving, so I’m thankful to have made a green woodworking friend so close by. Thanks, Joey – let’s do it again soon!

Joey (right) and I with the fruits of our labor.

Here are a few pictures of my spoon from the maple crook:

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Just a Quick Reminder…(UPDATED WITH THE WINNER!)

…about the upcoming drawing. I neglected to set a specific deadline for entries into last Friday’s Giveaway, so let me remedy that right now. The deadline will be 5 PM EST. I think I’ve gotten one additional entry in the last past 12 hours, so I don’t think that should cause too much heartburn.

Thanks to all who have entered so far, and good luck!

 

UPDATED WITH THE WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT:

Drumroll, please…Ahem. And the winner is:

Commenter Number 6! Or as I like to call her, Jessica. Congratulations, Jessica! We’ll have to get together one night so you can take possession of your brand new spoon.

And in the interest of transparency, below are the actual results from the drawing. If Jessica gets hit by a bus or otherwise meets her untimely demise on the way to claim her spoon, then Commenter Number 18, you’re up! (Of course we all wish Jessica the best of luck)

Thanks everyone for joining in! This was a lot of fun, check back occasionally because we’ll probably do it again some time.

Friday Giveaway (Drawing Over)

In a shameless effort to promote this blog, I’ve decided to give away this hand-carved live oak spoon. Here’s how it works:

If you want to be considered for the drawing, simply leave a comment on this post stating that you’d like to be entered. You have to do it on the blog, the Facebook page doesn’t count. On Monday, I’ll count the number of comments and use a true random number generator to pick the winning entry (you didn’t think I’d just pull it out of a hat, did you?). Check back on Monday evening, and I’ll announce the winner. The spoon will be shipped to you, anywhere in the world.

UPDATE: Drawing is completed. Congratulations, Jessica!

There is just more one string attached to this drawing. No, you don’t have to follow the blog or like my Facebook page – although you’re welcome to do so. The only thing I ask is that, if you win this spoon, you have to actually use it. I hate to think I’d be sending it away to be shoved in a dusty drawer behind the flatware. This is probably the best eating spoon I’ve ever made, I think it deserves to be used.

About the spoon: As I mentioned, it’s live oak (Quercus virginiana), which is not to be confused with any of your typical white and red oaks. It does not produce the large bands of pores in the spring that make most oaks unsuitable for spoon-carving. The annual rings are barely distinguishable. This is one of my new favorite woods to carve. It’s heavy, dense, and strong, which makes it difficult to work, but also allows the wood to be carved to the scantest dimensions and still retain its strength. I think you’ll be surprised by how light the spoon is. It’s finished straight from the knife – no sanding – and retains the smooth faceted surface as evidence. It will be finished with walnut oil unless the winner has a tree nut allergy in which case I can use tung oil (you can let me know if you’re the winner).

If there’s any interest, I’m thinking of carving a few spoons to offer for sale this fall. They’ll make great gifts for that special person on your list who already has a house full of disposable plastic shit. You can also order spoons that are better than mine from Jarrod Stone Dahl or JoJo Wood if you’re interested in supporting a full-time craftsperson.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and Happy Spooning!

Lunch Break Woodworking

In my never-ending quest to be the strangest person at my office, I recently decided that it would be a good idea to start woodcarving at work. Not at my desk, mind you. I’m not that weird. But I did quickly rough out a spoon blank in my shop last night and stuck it in my backpack along with a couple of knives to take to work this morning. During my lunch break, I sat by the pond behind the office, pulled out my sandwich and wood and knives, and started whittling away.

I sent these two termites heading for higher ground. I almost felt bad for interrupting their lunch while I was so thoroughly enjoying my own. Something seemed appropriate about carving an eating spoon out of something else’s dinner, though.

I’ve noticed something strange about my attitude towards spoons since I started carving my own. In the break room at my office, there’s usually a whole mug full of metal spoons from who knows where. Most of them are just cheap stamped metal, like what you got in your middle school cafeteria. They’re the same thickness throughout, and none of the edges are sharp, but neither are they rounded over. I hate those spoons. I never used to care. A couple of the spoons look like strays from someone’s fine flatware set. They’re nicely contoured, the necks are delicate, and there are no harsh edges where your mouth goes.These are the spoons I prefer to use, but usually someone else has already snagged them by the time I’m ready for my morning bowl of oatmeal.

Well, no more will I be left with the dregs. I’m keeping my own spoon from now on. Termite holes and all.

October was made for camping. Camping was made for carving.

Ahhh! October. Best month of the year, as far as I’m concerned. At least it is if you live in the Deep South. The heat and humidity of summer finally breaks, beckoning even the most climate-control-loving indoor enthusiasts into the open air. It was a month made for camping, so this past weekend, we headed for the oaky woods of Georgia with a few friends and pitched some tents by a lake. I packed a few simple tools – a small axe, a Sloyd knife, and couple of bent knives – and spent Saturday whittling by the fire.

I love my workshop, but sometimes at the end of a long work session, I gaze at my bench stacked haphazardly with so many complex tools – metal planes with a couple dozen precision-made parts, taper-ground saws,  micro-adjustable marking gauges, multiform chisels and gouges all of different shapes and sizes – and I marvel at the hundreds or thousands of hands and minds that coalesced to create this toolkit that allows me to create a simple (or sometimes not-so simple) piece of wooden furniture.

When I carve spoons, the tools are so simple so few that the opposite feeling is invited. One man at a forge could easily make in short order all of the tools that I need to turn a crooked branch to a ladle. I find few things more primally satisfying than taking a few pieces of sharpened steel and a stick of wood and carving something useful and beautiful.

Choosing a branch for spoon-carving is a good way to start any morning. It’s just a walk in the woods with a purpose. The woods around my campsite were filled with oak, hickory, and ash. All of them have large open pores, but I want a close-pored wood for carving spoons (It’s a preference, not a necessity. Some of my favorite spoons are catalpa and sassafras, which have big, open pores but the golden glow of the heartwood makes up for it). Sweetgum and blackgum were plentiful. Both have small pores and are easily carved, but they don’t split well due to interlocking grain so I passed them up (they are pretty homely woods, too, unless your sweetgum has rich reddish brown heartwood, but they don’t develop heartwood until they’re pretty big). I found some chalk maples, too. Maple makes a good spoon but chalk maples (Acer leucoderme) are a species of hard maple, and hard maple is, well, too hard. I prefer red maple for carving. The understory was filled with sparkleberry, and the occasional wild plum, crabapple, and hawthorn. All of these species are perfect for spoon carving. Close-grained and attractive wood.

My walk in the woods yielded a nice length of sparkleberry.

Crooks always yield interesting shapes, and sparkleberry always has plenty of crooks. Sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum) is a species of blueberry, and one of the few that reaches the size of a small tree. I’ve carved it before – the wood is hard and dense and honestly one of the tougher woods I’ve ever used – probably close to hard maple or yellow birch in hardness – but it has a lovely pink color that makes it completely worthwhile. Since it was the most plentiful, it was the easiest to find a branch that was worth carving.

The grain of this branch was particularly sinuous, so I took care to follow the grain perfectly. Not only does this result in the strongest spoon, it also creates an eye-catching shape. It’s slower going than carving straight-grained wood, but I love the end result.

I have never left the pith (the very center of the branch) in a spoon before, but for this spoon, it was too eye-catching to whittle it away. It’s wide and bright red and completely solid. I took special care to leave it on the underside of the handle. Sparkleberry has an eye-catching ray fleck as well, somewhere between maple and sycamore.

After I finished up the big serving spoon, my friend (a coffee aficionado) mentioned that he could use a replacement for his plastic coffee scoop. So I took a straight-grained section of wood and tried to carve something that was more worthy of his prized Guatemalan java beans.

He deemed it a success.

Both spoons, underside.

And topside.

This trip wasn’t all about woodworking, though. We still found plenty of time for hammock nonsense,

Stacked 5-high!

Cooking over an open fire,

My friends have an awesome blacksmith-made spit that I am officially coveting…

And enjoying the sunset by the lake.