Spoon carving is a wonderful beginning carving project, and a delightful canvas for advanced wood carvers. Every aspect of a wooden spoon can be changed, altered, and decorated.
You will need just a few wood carving chisels and gouges, a bench knife, some sandpaper, and mineral oil to give your spoon a final, food-safe finish.
This large apple butter paddle spoon was carved from 1″ thick basswood. The extra thickness gave more than enough room to add a pottery bird relief carving to the inside of the spoon bowl.
While these tools are great addition to your tools kit as your interest in spoon carving grows, they are not necessary to get started in your hobby or to create a fantastic original spoon design.
Even after 25 years of wood carving, I use a basic beginner’s tool kit that contains both wide sweep gouges and bent gouges, shown below, while not busting your wood carving budget.
This beginner’s wood carving gouge set includes two wide sweep gouges, one bent gouge, and two medium sized gouge, perfect for the beginning wooden spoon carver.
The one specialty tool that I do have in my beginner’s kit is a small draw knife. With a draw knife you can clamp your wood blank to your table and remove the excess wood from the outside of your spoon pattern quickly.
Once your wood blank is securely clamped to your table, you can used the draw knife to slice large, long shavings from the sides of the spoon handle.
The shape of the spoon bowl, the length of the handle, and the decorative treatment of both makes each new spoon you carve a work of art.
Spoons can be carved out of several wood species, but I prefer basswood because of its dense grain that takes detailing very well, its availability, and it’s ease of carving especially for beginners.
Pre-cut spoon shapes can be purchased, eliminating the need for a scroll saw, or excessive time cutting away the excess wood from your blank.
220- and 320-grit and paper and brown kraft paper (brown paper bag) are sued to remove any fine wood fibers left over from your carving cuts and decorative relief carving detail.
Finally you may chose to give your spoon a mineral oil finish. This gives the spoon a slight sheen and so feel in the hand. But finishing the spoon is not necessary. Many hand carved spoons are left in their natural wood finish.
This trio of wedding spoons – Welsh Love Spoons – were worked from 1/2″ thick basswood and carved with very flat, wide handle areas that were later chip carved.
A 1″ thick basswood blank gave more than enough depth to relief wood carve this Celtic knot dragon. the handle.
With your supplies gathered you are ready to start carving!
Here are the links to the free tutorials here on LSIrish.com that will guide you step-by-step through your first wood carving spoon project.
Arts and Craft Show Sales Ideas found below the project instructions.
I am also looking for new idea that can inspire our next wood carving, scroll saw, or pyrography project. I came across this idea, Yarn Tassel Maker, on Temu, loved it. The original was cut from 1/2″ board and is for sale at $5.95.
I think we can do better on the wood layout design and have fun adding a decorative wood burning! This is literally a ten minute project for the scroll saw cutting, sanding, and glue steps. Add another 10 minutes for the pyrography sets.
The knitters, crocheters, and weaver in your family are just going to love you when you gift them this tassel maker. As a crocheter, when it comes time to make a tassel I am scrambling for scraps of cardboard, thick enough to hold up to the yarn wraps, but thin enough to cut with my scissors.
My version is made with 3 pieces of 18″ plywood for strength, features a slot to accurately wrap a gather yarn for the top of the tassel and the gather yarn for the bottom of tassel ball, plus has a slot between the plywood layers at the bottom of the tassel maker where you can insert you scissor blades for easy cutting.
Supplies:
3 pieces of 1/8″ plywood that measures 3″ wide x 5″ long wood glue masking tape ruler scroll saw or coping saw graphite tracing paper pyrography pen paste wax finish yarn crochet hook or a large yarn needle scissors
NOTE: I made my first tassel maker to create a 5″ long tassel, but you can adjust the height of your tassel maker for 3″, 4″, and even extra long at 8″
NOTE: I went right for my pyrography pen for the decoration, but you can leave your tassel maker un-decorated, add decorative stickers, and even use scrapbook stamps to add a small design.
How to Create the Tassel Maker
1. My prototype was worked form 1/8″ foam core board.
On your 1/8″ plywood, make the outside dimensions for your tassel maker with a pencil – 3″ wide x 5″ long. Mark a line 3/4″ down from the top. Make a second line 1/2″ from the line above. Mark a line 3/4″ in from one side of the board. This makes the slot area of the tassel maker.
Gang cut the three pieces of plywood, following along the pencil lines.
Cut 1/4″ from the bottom edge of one plywood piece. This piece will become the center of the three layer stack. By removing a 1/4″ from that piece you create the slot so that the scissors can easily slip above the yarn for cutting.
Note: If you are working with foam core board, cut each piece individually. Use an exacto knife and hold the knife at a low angle to the board. Drop the cut slowly, using two or three cuts for each line. My foam core board prototype is as sturdy as my plywood project!
2. Sand the edges of the plywood with 220-grit sandpaper. Foam core board can be sanded with a fine-grit nail file, working each filing stroke in one direction.
3. Stack the pieces with the 1/4″ short plywood in the center, aligning the yarn slots. Use carpenter glue to glue the three layers together. Use masking tape to tightly hold the three pieces as the glue dries. For the foam core board prototype I used hot glue.
4. In the finished prototype, above, you can see the scissors slot.
How to Use the Tassel Maker
5. To create a tassel, hold one end of your yarn at the bottom of the tassel maker. Wrap the yarn over the full height of the tassel maker between 35 – 50 times depending on how thick a tassel you want.
6. Use your crochet hook to pull a 9″ piece of yarn under the wrapped yarn at the very top of the tassel maker. Make several loops, pull tight, and tie off. This yarn is used to secure your tassel to your hat or scarf.
7. Cut a 9″ length of yarn. Slide the yarn into the slot at the top of the tassel maker. Use a crochet hook to pull the yarn out of the slot on the opposite side of the wrapped yarn. Lay the yarn over the wrapped yarn and repeat this step several time. Pull the yarn tight and tie off. Use you crochet hook to pull the ends of the center wrap yarn behind the wrap, down into the tassel area.
8. Slide your scissors through the bottom slot of the tassel maker and cut all of the wrapped threads.
9. Slide the tassel off the tassel maker! You can use your scissors to trim up the tassel ends as needed.
10. The tassel maker is quick and easy to make, fun to use, and let’s you make as many tassels as you need that are all the same size.
Arts and Craft Show Ideas!
I did the Craft Show circuit for many years and was always looking for that ‘show stopper’ idea that caught the someone’s attention enough to tease them off the walkway and bring them up to my booth or table.
There are several things that I learned early and worked over and over again.
1. You never make a sale unless you can get your customer into a conversation.
2. A customer will browse over your booth from a distance if you only have high priced items. They will approach your table if you have some inexpensive items out at the front of the table.
3. The little items bring them your table where you can start that selling conversation that will then bring their attention to your higher priced items.
4. At a craft show you are competing with every other crafter for that one lump sum of money that they are willing to spend at the show on a high priced purchase, while a customer often makes multiple lower priced purchases.
5. You won’t get sales if you have to convince your customer that they need or want your products. But you almost always get the sale if you simply let them convince themselves that they need what you are selling.
6. Looking at the photo above, this display would be on the front of my table, about one or one and half feet from where I would be standing. Why? Because that little distance lets them approach without feeling that they will be ‘pounce’ on by my sales pitch. But they are well within talking distance when they reply to your “good afternoon, are you enjoying the show?”
7. Behind that display would be my selling basket for the tassel makers with several different sizes of maker, tassel makers with different designs, and with ribboned sets of 3″, 4″ and 5″ tassel makers.
8. Color sells, and most wood carvings, wood burning, and scroll saw projects don’t have color. But those tassels do, the knit hat does, and so do the brightly colored ribbons that are wrapped around the sets.
8. Again returning to the photo, the display visually shows the customer exactly what that ‘thing’ is, what it does, and how it works. They don’t have to ask you anything, but they will tell you … grin … what it does and why they just must have one.
9. Even my display scroll saw tassel maker has a designs that clearly shows ‘this is a tassel maker’, which emphasizes this is what you can make with it, and here is where you can use the tassels you make …
You have brought them into your booth and let them make the sale.
I really good you sell dozens of these little tassel makers at your next show!!!
Tonal Values in all crafts – wood carving, wood burning, colored pencils, and painting
If really is amazing the odd moments that you remember and that affect the rest of your life.
Mom and I had been to a doctor in lower, southern Baltimore that day. She decided to take the long way home as it was a wonderful country ride and it avoided the “new” interstate highway. I must have been less than 10 as my younger sister was not yet born, so about 1958 to 1962.
It was all rural dairy farm land at that time, Maryland’s main agriculture for the Piedmont area. Late afternoon, driving into the setting sun, we came to a T intersection just above the little town of Olney. Mom just stopped at the cross road and looked out across the farm land in front of us. We just sat there for the longest time.
In front of us was a small hill of pasture land with an old wire fence. On top of the rise was a dilapidated barn, leaning slightly, surrounded by young weed-tree saplings. The silo was long gone, but the old, rusting tractor still sat by the side of the barn.
“See that fallen down barn … look at where the roof has caved in and where the windows and doors are long gone. Do you see the light coming into the inside of barn from the holes in the roof? Look at how black the inside of the barn is but how bright the sunlight patches are where they hit the floor. They are brilliant white”
“Do you see the locust trees growing inside the barn, how their trunks and branches are white in sunlight coming into the barn, then disappear into the black shadows, but come out of the roof looking white again?”
‘Notice how you can’t really see anything inside the barn where the black shadows are but you can see all the details where the sunlight has come through the roof. Now THAT’S a painting!!!!”
It wasn’t the barn; it wasn’t the old tractor; it wasn’t even all the colors of the field, trees, and red barn paint that she saw … it was the light and shadows. Mom was an accomplished artist who, as I, started out as an oil painter and later supported her family from her craft business income.
I passed that barn many, many times later in my life when I traveled from the University of Maryland to home. Over the years it slowly settled into just a pile of rotten wood planks, and eventually was lost under those weed-trees that had grown to full size. Every time I came to that T intersection, like Mom, I stopped and looked and pondered the bright sunshine highlights and the black afternoon shadows – the tonal values of that rustic landscape.
So in working on a new update for my blog and pattern site I was compiling a series of images of some of my work, shown above. When I put them together as one image – wood carvings, wood burnings, colored pencils, tutorials, and oil painting – I realized they all had one thing in common. Every project, for me, is about tonal value and how to capture those bright white highlights and blackest shadows.
Art is about the white eyelashes of that cow lying over the blackest shadow inside her ear. Its about cutting a deep undercut to free the sides of the fence from the wood to cast a dark shadow. Its about working the under painting of a white flower so that the insides of the petal are starkly contrasted to the white roll overs of the petal’s edge.
For me, art is about tonal values, and it is because of that one little, brief moment of my Mom sharing her love of just seeing the world through those highlights and shadows.
Do you make these common mistakes in your chip carving?
Too often a chip carved triangle is just not perfect. So let’s look at why these small errors happen and how to correct them to create the very best chip carving project you can!
1. RAGGED WALLS
Ragged walls can be caused by either poor quality wood or an improperly sharpened knife. Basswood is a common chip carving wood that has finely packed, dense grain lines, and is considered an easy wood to work. But not all basswood is adaptable to chip carving. Avoid end grain plaques as you are cutting across the open end of the vascular bundles, which are similar to small soda straws that draw moisture up through the tree. Also avoid ‘hardware store’ thin basswood sheets. The 1/4″ and 1/8″ thick sheets are not the high wood quality of a 3/4″ plaque.
A dull knife tears through the wood grain instead of cutting it. Learn how to properly sharpen your chip carving knife. When you are concerned that your chips are repeatedly coming out rough, stop and take time to resharpen and hone your knife edge.
2. ROUGH CENTER POINT IN THE CHIP WELL
Each chip should have a sharp, clean point at the center of the chip well. This is caused because the angle of one of the side cuts did not fully reach the deep center point of the chip, where the three walls intersect. Correct this by re-cutting that wall, taking your knife point slightly deeper.
Free form lines and straight wall cuts also can get misaligned at the center of the well. Double check that you are using the correct hand grip on your knife and that your depth is even throughout the cutting stroke.
3. STAGGERED WALL STROKES
This chip’s wall was cut with several staggered strokes. During the cutting step either you changed the angle of your knife, or paused during the cut which misaligned the knife’s edge through the remaining stroke. Re-cut that wall with one, smooth, clean stroke.
4. THIN TOP EDGE
Your knife angle is just as important at the top of the triangle cut as it is on the wall and well. It is easy to end up with a top edge that is not razor sharp, the preferred finish for any chip carver. A simple wobble as you make the stroke can cause the knife to miss the fine edge of the neighboring chip.
Try turning the wood to recut the chip. A new view of that top edge may help steady the stroke.
5. WOBBLY EDGES
Every chip carver discovers wobbly edged chip walls. I find this problem often occurs when I am cutting through a spray adhesive paper pattern. Both the glue and the paper can cause the knife edge to be pushed away from the pattern line. Correct this by re-cutting the chip wall by thinly shaving just the bulge, not the points of the chip.
6. CHIP OUT
Chip outs happen and can be caused by several reasons. If you are working on a heavy grain wood as sugar pine, the change in the grain can cause a small thin point to break free.
On soft woods, as basswood, the edge of the point can be lost because the knife was pulled out instead of lifted out of the cut. To lift out the knife simply stop the stroke. Gently pull the knife back along the stroke just a small bit, then lift the knife free from the cut. Pulling on the tip of the blade at the end of the cut can add excess pressure that lifts a grain line.
Over cutting one side of the point, reaching the blade too deeply into the wood, can cause a point to chip out. Try scoring the pattern line first by lightly cutting along the line with just the tip of your chip knife. This pre-cuts and therefore pre-releases the wood grain at the point of the chip before you make the actual chip stroke.
Chip outs can be repaired by using wood glue and a tooth pick. Place a small drop of glue on he board at the break out spot. Use the toothpick to insure that the glue is deeply pressed into the chip area, not trapping any air space below the glue. Replace the chip out and press firmly. After about one-half hour of drying you can re-cut and sand this area.
NOTE – SANDPAPER FEELING TO THE CUTTING STROKE
It bares noting again that the greatest success with your chip carving comings with a properly sharpened chip knife. So, please download a copy of our free, 38 page, pdf file on Easy Steps to Bench Knife Sharpening.
Learn how to carve beautiful designs in wood with just a few basic knives!
Over 200 designs, ready to use, with layout ideas, grids, borders, and motifs
Step-by-step practice project helps you master the simple chip carving shapes and techniques you will need
Expert advice on knife selection & sharpening, how to prepare your wood blank, and how to transfer patterns
Tips & techniques for hand positions, knife positions, gang cutting, and how to handle a chip out
Blank practice grids so you can use your new chip carving knowledge to create your own designs
Chip carving, also known as spoon carving or “Kerbschnitt,” is the ideal introduction to woodcarving for beginners.
This simple traditional carving method uses just a few basic knives to remove selected chips of wood in small triangles, squares, and free-form curves, producing amazingly intricate and delicate results.
Internationally known woodcarving artist and author Lora S. Irish shows you how to get started in this venerable craft! Inside Chip Carving Workshop, Lora takes you through all the essential chip carving techniques, from tool sharpening and preparation to hand positions, chip cutting, and finishing.
You’ll discover how to use both geometric shapes and free form designs to create wonderfully detailed patterns. A step-by-step practice project shows you how to master the simple shapes that will allow you to cut any grid pattern in the book.
Hundreds of ready-to-use designs offer a rich treasury of chip carving layout ideas, grids, borders, and motifs for you to trace and reproduce in any combination or size.
Decorate household items and create artistic pieces in a variety of original designs: Hope chests, wooden spoons, jewelry chests, clocks, candle plates, serving trivets, and decorative plaques are just a few ideas for your new chip carving skills!
