Spoon Carving

For the past several weeks I've been working on carving my first spoon.

I had always intended to carve one but after the hand injury I've been sorely lacking the strength and endurance in my right hand to spend much time on it. Then I read this post on Pablo's blog and decided to really commit myself to getting the spoon done while my kids were asleep. (Being a stay at home dad does afford me some opportunity to practice my skills during the regular work week.)

What makes spooncraft, as Pablo so appropriately calls it, so difficult is that I know what a spoon is supposed to look like. I've seen spoons my entire life. Whether they be made of metal or plastic or wood they all have looked, more or less, the same. Mine doesn't look like any of them...yet.

This isn't some stylized rooster I'm working on but a utensil that I can hopefully use when I'm out in the woods. My mind and my eye are working together to remove the non-spoon parts. The going has been a bit slow but a spoon is slowly coming out of the wood.

I've got the rough shape completed and work on carving down the handle to a comfortable diameter has commenced. I've also started carving into the bowl and shaping the outside back of the bowl where the wood transitions into the handle. It's looking good to me but the outside observer might be hard pressed to see a spoon if it weren't for my pencil drawings on the wood.

Thanks for reading,

B