I’m not planning on becoming a full time spoon whittler any time soon but I love the idea of spoon carving and am impressed by the craft. I wanted to make a little spoon for my daughter that she could use but also keep and in years to come say “my dad made that”
I used some bass wood as this is a really nice wood for beginner carvers like myself, with relatively friendly grain pattern and not too hard.
I used a pencil to trace the outline of the little spoon I wanted to make then started whittling away around the edges.
I used my flex cut carving jacks gouges to cut out the hollow and one of the knives to do the actual whitling. I can see how this would be a nice tool out in the field but suspect a dedicated knife/gouge is the way to go when in the workshop.
So to really personalise it I then burned my daughters initials on the handle using a soldering iron.
I then soaked the entire spoon in tung oil/white spirit to bring out the grain and once dry gave it a light sand.
I then added two light coats of shellac to seal it over the following night.
Carving took about an hour and a half in total done over three nights and a further 3 nights for drying. I don’t think it would easy to do this for a living even if you’re really good!
In hindsight a small spoon was probably more difficult to do than a big spoon would have been due to trying to hold the thing comfortably.
Most importantly – the client was happy! 🙂
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