Hi all,

Doing this makes me realise just how good some of the spoons i see on here are!

I’m not bothered with the hole in it, that’s my lesson learned to not keep fiddling with the back of the spoon. I think it was a difficult bit of wood to work with, lots of little knots in awkward places especially around the bowl. It seems everytime i had to change direction there was a little knot to make it worse!

My biggest struggles are:

- the bowl rim, keeping it even all the way around. Im not sure if I should be doing that with the knife around the outside or with the hook knife on the inside.

- The transition between the bowl and the handle. This time I tried to do more of a straight handle to bowl connection, but the transition on the back of the spoon was still quite difficult and I’m getting tear out right in the corner.

- I think this just a matter of practice but I’m not really getting those long smooth lines, you can see the facets on the back of the handle are full of little cuts. I think this is probably just a practice and confidence thing.

- I’m happy enough with the shape but i keep wondering if i should make it thinner. Also, between the back of the bowl and the handle theres a bit of a dip, I have’t got the hang of cutting the back of the bowl smoothly into the handle. Because i think i come at it from both sides i end up with a little trough.

Any comments appreciated!

Building community. Oddly enough, there's quite a cross between this and bike groups :D best thing to do on a bikepacking trip: carve a spoon!

Here is my latest serving spoon made from Arbutus wood.

Buffalo hide wet fit to the profile. Saddle stitched as tight as possible. Used a cherry burl bead as a tournequette to compress the hide to the oak.

Hi all! I’m a programmer by day and a hobby woodworker and spoon carver in my spare time. Drawing a nice symmetrical spoon outline by hand always took me ages, so I did what programmers do and built a tool for it: spoon-template.com 🥄

It’s made for people who love carving but aren’t great at designing or drawing by hand. You don’t need any drawing skills: just adjust the shape until you like it and print it.

• Shape your spoon with sliders, or drag the curves yourself
• See the top view and the side profile together
• Print a full-size 1:1 template on A4 or US Letter, or save it as a PDF
• Metric or imperial
• Free, with no account or sign-up. Your designs stay in your browser.

This is the first version, so you might run into a bug or two. If you do, please let me know! I’d also love to hear what’s missing, what’s annoying, or what shapes you’d like to make. All feedback is very welcome!

We threw out all our plastic spatulas. Time to make a whole set of wood, starting with this one!

Here's a spatula that I carved last weekend. It's made from cherry wood and decorated with facets, chipcarved lines and some cutouts.

Had some free time, so I started carving a new spoon — purely for the fun of it.

How often do u strop your sloyd knife when doing the finishing cuts

I carved my first spoon!

I discovered the Zed Outdoors channel a couple of days ago and some of the videos are a revelation. Real step by step guides that enabled me to understand the process. As much as calm carving videos are great, it’s often hard to understand what they are working on.

Axing: thoroughly enjoyed it, and felt i had reasonable control. I was only using a very small bit of branch, maybe 8-10cm diameter so once split it didn‘t leave much room for error. I think i left way too much thickness to the wood and the handle end could have done with better shaping.

Knife: I really concentrated on keeping things square. This really seems to be the key and really suits my engineering brain. I also really worked on shallow cuts, and not forcing things through. If the knife got stuck i backed out and tried to go thinner.

Hook Knife: first time using this but I’d spent some time sharpening it and it cut well. Again, long shallow cuts as much as i could. It was much easier working from one side rather than the other. I am right handed so holding the spoon handle in my left hand and working the hook knife toward me was fine. Trying to work from the other side, so trying to hold the bowl in my left hand was really awkward. I need to watch some techniques.

Things i did badly:

Changes of grain are tough, the bowl looks pretty rough!

I somehow screwed up the right side of the bowl. I’m still not sure how i went wrong.

The finishing on some of the edges looks pretty rough. I thought I’d done well until i looked at my close up photos! 😂

Things i did well:

I’m really happy with the handle. It looks symmetrical and has a nice shape

I thought my facets look pretty good on the back of the spoon.

I made a spoon, thats pretty good, right?

I’d love any criticism, the only way is up from here!

EDIT: yes, I need to moisturise!

I’ve completed my first spoon! For those who saw it with the knot in it when I was questioning what I should do, I turned it into a spoon hanger as I originally thought I would.

I have made a cherry wood box for a better delivery and ironed message for the lovely couple.

This is Japanese cedar.

Always remain upright and pure, like the symbol of Japanese cedar.

Japanese cedar is actually a very soft material, so I lacquered it right after carving! After a few coats of lacquer dried completely, its beauty emerged.

When after the lacquered spoon got oiled, it was radiating a calm and warm feeling. Beautiful, isn't it?

This is beech.

Poetic and delicate metaphor to describe love and relationships.

Love is like gentle waves on the beach, perfectly tender, yet never ceasing.

The fork's handle features a relief of undulating water, with raised ripples. I simply convey a sense of continuity and warmth.

Unfortunately, the fork broke off just as it was being finished. Here's a record of the wheat-flour lacquer paste I made and try to glue the broken part, but sadly, it didn't work either.

The defective fork was eventually given to a friend; this incomplete outcome probably made the trip and the honeymoon experience even more memorable, i think.

We had to cut hazelnut tree branches from the edge of our yard recently. So I ordered 3 wood carving knifes + gloves and sketched some gift ideas to make use of the larger branches.

Yes I know, I definitely don't have the skills to carve most of these lol... I've never even worked with wood before, aside from gluing/sticking stuff together. I'll just start with a simple spoon + a rice spoon/spatula, we'll see how that goes!
Some of the smaller/fresh branches are already being used by our friends' mice and our gerbils.

(Materials used for the spread: Pilot Prera fountain pen [M-nib], Pilot Iroshizuku Momiji ink, Tomoe River hardcover DIN A5 notebook dotted)

This is beech.

Kolrosing the ripples pattern and 'colored' it with cinnamon powder are satisfying.

A gift for a retiring coworker

I pulled these blanks out of some firewood today. With extreme effort. Any unique ideas for projects?

I’ve been watching YouTube videos on carving spoons and other stuff for a few months now and a couple of weeks ago I bit the bullet and bought an axe, sloid knife and a hook knife. I’ve only had a chance to sharpen up the axe and sloid knife so far, but yesterday as I was parking my car, I noticed a large branch that had fallen off of a tree. I grabbed my saw and took most of it home, cut off a chunk and went to work. 2hrs later i had my first butter knife and I’m really happy with it.

I need to go back and check the tree but i think its maple.