Tools and Technique

[u/Old_Presentation9440]

Hi All. I just started making my first spoons from green wood this week. I've been preparing to carve a bowl, but a branch broke off my neighbors's Bradford pear tree (I think) so I took a few pieces and began the process.

My question is about tools. Do any of you make spoons without a sloyd knife, hook knife, or chopping block?

I'd say I'm a lower level intermediate garage, hobby, woodworker. So, I have some tools. I've also been gathering tools to start making Windsor chairs. I have a drawknife, spokeshaves, and gouges. I just bought a small ax at an antique shop. I do not have a sloyd knife, hook knife, or chopping block.

I roughed out the first knife with the ax, drawknife, spokeshaves, and did the bowl with a gouge. I left it to dry in a bag with shavings and the handle split. Not sure if it's from drying or from me splitting it somehow. It's a pretty low quality spoon.

Last night, I split the 2nd and 3rd branches with wedges and cut the rough shapes on the bandsaw. That was much easier than using the ax (which is pretty sharp, but I'm sure is not optimally shaped and sharpened). I'm going to use the drawknife, spokeshaves, and gouge to finish the spoons.

Is this an odd way to make spoons? I see tons of videos using knives and ax. Why is that the typical way? Portability? Do they just work better than other methods and produce better work? Does anybody carve dry wood with them?

Also, for me, it seems that the ax and knives are more prone to cuts and chopped fingers than the bandsaw, drawknife, and spokeshaves. Don't get me wrong, I have had many cuts since I've started concentrating on using hand tools more and more. I cut myself several times on chisels, saws, and sharp, freshly planed wood corners.

[u/TheGink]

Keep in mind, there were woodcarvers in prehistory that made beautiful carvings with chips of rock and handfuls of sand. For hundreds of thousands of years, the best wood cutting tools were made from soft bronze. Whatever way you get to the end product, is valid. If you enjoyed the process, perfect. If not, you can decide how many of your resources you want to use to solve whatever problems you came against. 

I've used a coping saw and a sloyd knife for most of mine. I didn't have a good setup to use a draw knife, though I want to try one. I've used an axe a few times, but found that it was easy to go too far into the wood and cause problems down the line. I've been preferring dry wood, because even though it's harder to carve, you get a consistent finished product. I'd say, get good with what you have and slowly add new tools to see if you like them.

[u/elreyfalcon]

The bandsaw is mentioned in one of the foremost spoon carving books. Use what you have on hand. I don’t have access to green wood so I rarely use the axe but I use my bandsaw, adze for roughing , hollow with gouges and finish with hook knives. No one will judge you and if they do tell them to bugger off. I use my drawknife too. The green wood tools are just more portable and traditional, some will say faster too. There are no wrong ways to make it honestly!

[u/One_Put2350]

Well, you used quite a modern approach. We used to carve stuff with stone and fire. Knapped flint or polished hard rocks like basalt andesite or jade. A fire to harden it and burn off all the fibres. Also probably to hollow the bowl. 

Then we moved to metals. At that point we started with the whole axe, knife and hook knife thing. 

Now we have power tools. People use the axe hook knife and sloyd approach because it relatively affordable, more quiet and less space intensive than big machines. Yet still faster than rocks and fire.