There are four easy methods to rough cutting your wood carving spoon blank – bench knife, coping saw, draw knife, and scroll saw. Your bench knife or coping saw work wonderfully on thin woods that are under 3/4″ thick, and soft woods as basswood. Go to your scroll saw or draw knife for thick, 1″ or more blanks and for your hardwoods as walnut and cherry.
Previous Posts in this Spoon Carving Series
The Art of Spoon Carving
Discover why I carve spoons!
Spoon, Fork, and Ladle Styles for Wood Carving, Traditional Spoon Styles and Shapes.
Spoon Carving Supply List
Basswood spoon blanks – I personally shop EBay.com for my basswood blanks. I can see the exact bundle of wood that I am bidding or buying. Plus it is easy to find thicker and wider wood and un-planed , rough-sawn wood blanks that are perfect to bent handled spoons. You can any carving wood to create decorative spoons, but I prefer basswood especially when I am working on a new design or shape.
The Art of Spoon Carving by L S Irish
10″ length Coping Saw
Coping Saw Blades
Clutch Style Bar Clamp
Heavy Duty Anti-Slip Mat
Flexcut 3″ Straight Drawknife
Cut Resistant Gloves
Wood Carving Chisel Tool Set (8 Pcs)
Ryobi 16 in. Corded Scroll Saw
Pin End Scroll Saw Blade Assortment
PFEIL “Swiss Made” Made Roughing Knife
Flexcut Carving Tools, Carving Knife Set, Set of 4
Bench Knife
Every wood carving tool set should contain a high-quality bench knife or large chip carving knife. This tool is the main stay of our craft and you can accomplish almost all your carving strokes with just a bench knife. I personally prefer a large chip carving knife as my bench knife because it puts my hand closer to the wood.
back the knife out of the deep cut and re-cut along the sliver taking a more shallow, thin approach.
Work along the sides of the template patterns to free the spoon shape from the blank.
Coping Saw
The coping saw is a great woodworking tool that you can use to quickly reduce your wood blank into your rough cut spoon. The saw hold a scroll saw blade between two widely spaced arms, giving you plenty or room to cut tight, intrigue curves along the edges of your spoon shape.
railing.
Because the wood blank for this project is thin stock, 1/2” thick, sandwich the wood blank between two scrap basswood boards. This gives the back side of the wood blank added strength during the cutting process and protects the wood blank from clamp marks.
Wrap a wide piece of non-skid kitchen mat around the outside of the wood sandwich. Place the sandwich on your secure surface and clamp into place.
At the end of each arm of your coping saw is a small levered screw that can be loosen to open the hole that will hold the end of the saw blade. Set the blade into your coping saw with the blade teeth pointed down or into the cut as you work a push stroke.
Draw Knife
The draw knife is a two handled, flexible straight blade that is used to rough cut the spoon shape from your wood blank. The blade has a chiseled edge that when pulled along the wood blank, working with the wood grain, removes long, thin slices quickly. I will note here that if you are a walking stick, hiking stick, or cane carver a draw knife becomes a ‘must have’ for easy stick shaping.
You will need a strong, secure base onto which you can clamp your wood blank during the draw knife session. Because this is a two-handed grip tool you can put a great deal of power and pressure into each cutting stroke which can rock a light weight table or work bench.
The work bench in my studio is too light weight to handle the power pulls of a draw knife, but the porch rail, just off the back door, has the strength I need so that the energy of each cut goes directly into cutting the blank.
I clamp my wood blank to the top rail with non-skid mats and a clutch bar clamp, about 18″ from the railing corner. The corner post gives the railing the strength and the 18″ space gives me elbow room to work.
Find and mark the grain direction of your wood blank with a marking pen or dark pencil. Lay your spoon pattern onto the wood aligned with that grain line. A draw knife follows the grain of the wood closely.
Scroll Saw
Using a scroll saw to cut your spoon blanks makes creating any rough-cut spoon blank quick and simple. The steps, directions, and instructions to using a scroll saw to cut your carving or pyrography blanks is featured in an in-depth project – Cross Crafting Seminar – an eight page project with free patterns, here on LSIrish.com.
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