Creating a wooden spoon.

Hello Mike,

If you have made the spoon part that needs to be hollowed an oval the way most spoons are made, the only way to hollow the bowl is with carving tools: gouges and hook tools do a nice job. I turned some spoons about five years ago out of some dry cherry. I actually turned two spoons at once and then sawed them down the middle to create two spoons. I then carved the bowls out with my carving tools. This is a pretty slow process for very hard woods.

Another tool that will do a quick job of hollowing the bowl of an oval spoon is the Lancelot from King Arthur's, I'm not sure who carries this now, or the Arbotec tool made in Australia. I have one of the Lancelot tools and it works great for hollowing larger areas. It is very agressive and the spoon will need to be securely clamped to a bench of something.

Now, if you made the bowls round and the handles are not too long, you can make up a special chuck to hold the spoon in place while you hollow the bowl just as if you were making a small bowl. You just have to avoid the spinning handle which can smart if it hits you.

At Provo last summer, Jean Francois Escoulin demonstrated turning spoons with offset handles using his ball and socket chuck. He made the bowls of his spoons round since he hollowed them like a bowl. I covered this in the August or September, 2004 issues of More Woodturning, at the moment I don't remember which issue.

Probably for what you need to do, a Lancelot or an Arbotec would probably meet your needs best.

Fred Holder

For the cherry spoons I made, I used a small gouge to hollow out the spoons. I found that a shallower cut (rather than a deep hollow) is more useful, unless you are making a dipper.

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I've not made spoons, but the technique I use to create a recess in the bottom of small bowls may be helpful here.

I chuck the 2" power sanding head (I normally use in my hand drill to sand the rest of the bowl on the lathe) into the drill press. That gives me two hands free to handle what needs to be sanded.

I use 80 grit to shape the recess, and then move to finer grits to finish the process.

Gordon

very rough spikes on it. make sure you hold the spoon tight with some sort of clamp and the flex shaft handle tight because the burr really removes wood fast. after you get it to the approximate shape you want; then either just use sandpaper to smooth it or use a finer burr. you could scrape it with a curved knife blade also. i've carved spoons with knives before and it takes a lot of time. chisels are faster, but you have to pay close attention to wood grain direction with them and if you are chiseling a burl; then that is difficult. the burrs come in several shapes and two degrees of roughness. they are expensive, but can be used in a lot of other situations. do not try to use a dremel mototool because it will take you forever and they are a little bit weak.

as for turning the spoon bowl on the lathe: you could make yourself a jig to hold the spoon blank and turn the bowl twice using two different centers, just a quarter inch or so apart and smooth the result later. then turn the spoon after you have turned the spoon bowl. that would give you an oblong spoon bowl to start out with. i leave it up to you or the rest of the group to come up with the jig, but i would think it would be fairly easy. making the jig so the angle of the bowl to the spoon shaft was adjustable would be tricky. good luck, rich

Hi Mike!

I hollow out the spoon end with the red Typhoon bits that Fordom has. Their red carbide bits are more aggressive than their blue ones. I don't have a Fordom, but my Dremel works just fine with their 1/8" shank bits. I think they go for about $15 - $18 (US). I have a flex shaft for it to make it easier to handle as I carve out the spoon. I then use Dremel's abrasive pad that mounts on it's arbor attachment for final smoothing.

Hope this helps!

- Dan Klima

I'm a spoon carver to the tune of two-three hundred a year, and I also own the Pfeil scorp, which resides on the shelf where I put it perhaps a half-dozen years ago. IMO, worse than useless, though as an inshave, it might be of some value.

The hooked knives are useful for smoothing, though there's nothing that can beat a gouge for removing the interior. I use (real) poplar V blocks to protect the handle when I do turn a spoon, and clamp it securely to my surface before carving with my 1 1/2" #7. Clamp to something which you can walk around, so you can take full advantage of slicing downhill. I can get a useable surface with the gouge, though it takes longer than smoothing with my hooked knives. DO NOT try to hold the spoon in one hand and the knife in the other, use the wooden hands and put both of the vulnerable fleshy ones on the knife handle.

Soren berger makes spherical type spoons on a lathe - they are more like scoops, quite attractive, Raffan makes scoops on a lathe as well, info in his book

"william_b_noble" wrote: (clip) Raffan makes scoops on a lathe as well, (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ If we're going to talk about scoops: A scoop is much like a goblet, with part of the bowl removed, and is turned the same way. The stem of the goblet is equivalent to the handle of the scoop. (and the foot is left off, of course.)

you may leave the foot on if you want the scoop to stand up and be counted ..... :)