Spoon Carving

Back in the summer, we went for a weekend camping, and I tried my hand at spoon carving.
I thought the main techniques would be similar to those I learned on the bowyer course. This was true, but just showed me how much I had forgotten! However, whilst making the bow was largely big strokes and the very fine finessing to finish, this was all about close shaping strokes with lots of control from the start, so I was shown and got to practice some new cutting strokes.
Tools used were straight knife for the primary shaping, and a crook knife for the bowl. (It is also possible to burn out the bowl with an ember, but that's not what I wanted to learn...)
The course was very informal and we chatted rather too much, so I didn't quite finish my spoon, although I did get it to a usable rough state. It just needed some fine shaping and smoothing to finish. I had intended to do this after I got home, but have decided to keep my first spoon as-is. I will polish up my next one.

Photos show the newly split Birch, through drawing and roughing out the spoon shape, to nearly complete project.



I shouldn't have tried the paddle shaped handle as this added significantly to the complexity of carving the handle, and I should probably have tried to make a smaller spoon overall. This would have meant less complex cutting so I might have finished, but I guess you find out more than the direct skills learning these crafts...