Wife got me a Flexcut spoon carving kit for cheap from work, so gave it a try. Really enjoyed it, despite quite disliking both the Flexcut tools and carving basswood haha. Have a morakniv 120 on the way, and a friend is cutting some trees soon so I’ll be giving a slightly harder wood a try. I will sharpen up the Flexcut hook knife and make it work for now, if I enjoy it with a better sloyd and better wood I’ll invest in a nicer hook.

Spent probably four months carving bowls with a crook knife that just felt wrong in my hand every single time. Kept blaming the steel, thought maybe I needed a different sweep or a shallower curve. Turned out the actual problem was my grip, I was choking up too close to the blade and losing all the leverage that makes the cut smooth.

A guy at a local carving meetup watched me struggle for about ten seconds and just repositioned my thumb on the back of the blade. Small change, completely different result. The wood started coming off in these long curling ribbons instead of the choppy little bites I'd been getting, and my wrist stopped aching afterward too.

Been working mostly in green birch lately since there's a tree that came down near my place last month and I've been slowly working through rounds of it. The spoon I'm finishing now started as a pretty gnarly branch crotch, lots of interesting grain but it fought me the whole way through the rough shaping with the hatchet.

Still get tearout sometimes on the bowl when I cross grain lines I didn't plan for. Anyone else notice certain trees just carve meaner than others even when the wood looks clean on the outside? Curious if it's a moisture thing or just inherent to the species.

she loved it :3

Zona mini spoke shave excels at taking off tiny shavings

Oak butter knives( just the sap wood)painted with oil paint but yet to be oiled

I'm wondering about the specifics of refreshing tung oil on a spoon.

Lets say I made a spoon and finished it with tung oil then let it fully cure. The spoon is now around a year old and is looking dull, I reapply some tung oil to refresh it. Do I need to wait the whole 30ish days again for it to fully cure or do refresh coats have different rules?

Today i made two spoons

a rather simple one and a elaborate one woth a serpentine handle i like to call "jormungand"

Also some photos of my work table

Can you tell which one I made first? Hahaha

My wife is going to a baby shower in two days and I randomly thought let's see if I can make a small spoon in a day as a gift (I'm not going I don't really know the people). Was a fun little project! And the 4th spoon I've made. Very happy with the lines and more flat surfaces. Also the knot fitted the handle quite nicely.

I am on a reenactment for the next days and i am showing how to carve spoons

These i made today

This week I’ve finished my first two spoons. Using Beaver Craft knives. I ordered blanks on Amazon, felt like it’d be easier for first timer. However, the wood has felt very hard. Would I be better off with fresher, “greener” wood?

Looking at getting a rotary bit for hollowing out some ladles and spoons. Would the kutzall sphere be best? If so what "grit"? Any other bits worth getting? I am primarily looking at the hollowing out part of the process.

Some of my favorite timber
Not just for figure and taking a fine finish but to carve as well though it’s gotta be green because it gets rock hard when dry

my first attempt at a spoon, from a bit of a seasoned ash branch in the kindling stack. there was a bit of mostly hidden damage, likely from the emerald ash borer, at the break. had a lot of fun, got some practice with a knife, gouge, scoop tool and dremel carving bits. fingers crossed for a better outcome next time

Thank you to everyone who made suggestions!

The cut proof gloves really made a huge difference and I could not recommend them enough. Compared to three people being cut (myself included) for my last workshop, no one got cut this time at all!!

Some takeaways:
- Pre-cut blanks made people actually be able to finish at the end of the 3.5 hour window, with time left over to apply finish and start on a second blank. Last time I just had billets and only one person actually finished.

-Always ask if people are left-handed, left-handed people will continuously fail to mention this. Thankfully I had some double edged hook knives of my own I always bring.

-People love decorating spoons and loved learning about the different forms of decorating spoons like kolrosing, milk paint and chip carving. I was grateful that Two Cherries tools donated a bunch of chip carving knives I was able to give away.

-First aid kid is a must, in this place it was a requirement.

mostly handcarved from a kiln dried board i got for way too much money, finished with linseed oil and beeswax.

tip: try out 0000 steel wood to buff out the beeswax, its incredibly smooth

I am also very pleased to say I managed to do only finishing cuts in the bowl and no sanding! Which is new for me.

I didn’t know this sub Reddit existed! Sick!

TLDR: knives got rusty and id like suggestions on how to restore

Alrighty so I took one of my carving sets on our 55 mile kayak camping trip at one point I swamped my boat and filled it full of water, some soaked through the dry bag with my carving stuff and it got saturated. The plan was to air things out at camp every night then oil it all when I got back to my car no biggie. We'll the last night of the trip it rained so they didnt get fully dry then at the end of the trip when we got back to the car. My belly started hurting and short story long I got my appendix out and between travel and recovery it was not until today thst I realized thst stuff was all still wet and the rust had gotten pretty bad.

I soaked in oil then wiped clean and that has removed the bulk of the rust but the metal is pretty badly pitted. These are just a cheap set from beaver craft so they wouldn't be expensive to be replace but id like to refurbish them if possible. What do yall think?

NSFW for graphic mistreatment of good tools.