The Craftiest Workshop

Last year around this time, I went through a phase where I was wood burning on wooden spoons that I bought at Dollarama.

I had injured my ankle on the May long weekend and there wasn’t much else I could do but wood burning.

Here are some of those spoons.

At that time I remember thinking how great it would be to be able to carve my own wooden spoons and then add some wood burning to those.

We hunted around the internet to see how people were making spoons. Of course, there is the traditional carvers that use an axe, knives and sand paper. We also found some people using a grinder attachment called an Arbortech Ball Gouge, a band saw and a belt sander.

We found the ball gouge at KMS Tools here in Grande Prairie months ago but I didn’t have the opportunity to use it until this past week. I knew that I needed the band saw to make the spoon so I waited until the saw had arrived in the moving truck.

Our neighbour across the street in Fort McMurray does home renovations. Whenever he has leftover hardwood from a project that he doesn’t want, he passes it on to us. At some point he had given us these 1X2 strips of oak.

We thought it would be perfect for making spoons. I cut a few of the strips before researching and finding out that oak is not the best wood for making spoons because it is a porous wood. They could still be used as salad spoons, decorative spoons or even something to dig in the garden with. I decided to finish them either way and will make more using some maple that we have.

I found a video that helped me get started on the spoons.

Using the video for measurements, I created a template for myself using a hard sheet of plastic that I had (a plastic duotang would work as well).
I then traced the template on all my pieces.
Using the ball gouge attached to the grinder, I removed the wood to create the hollowed out part of the spoon.

The bandsaw was next and I used it for most of the work; cutting the handle, sculpting around the hollowed part and making a curve on the back.

Once the spoons were roughly cut, I started smoothing them out using the belt sander. The last step was to smooth everything once more with 80 and 120 grit sand paper by hand, getting into the spots were the belt sander couldn’t.

I like how each spoon turned out slightly different in shape.
If I made a mistake, I corrected it by taking off a bit more in an area then balancing it on the other side of the spoon.

If I decide to try to use any of these with food, I will coat them in walnut oil first.

I will definitely be burning on some of them.

I plan to use some leftover maple hardwood flooring pieces for my next batch of spoons. We had bought unfinished 3/4” maple for the floor we put in while living in Trenton and we had quite a bit left over.
In addition to more spoons, I would like to try to make a spaghetti spoon, a long fork and a spatula.