From a Log to a Spoon

Course Overview

[MUSIC PLAYING] In a disposable world, essential items of lasting beauty are increasing in worth. Experience the fulfillment of creating heirlooms for succeeding generations with your own hands. Hi, my name is Frank Strazza with the Ploughshare School of Woodworking. Today I'm going to show you how I make a spoon from a tree. So I cut this tree down yesterday. I like this tree because it's got some nice straight grain. It's actually chinaberry, which is really a weed type tree. But I think it'll make a nice spoon. It's got some nice grain here. I cut it down. And I'm going to buck it to length here. If we can do it without getting hurt. We'll just cut this part off right here. And this is something that we can pull right out of the woods. Here we go. I think this'll work. Now there's a little bit of a knot here. But if we cut it again right here you get a nice straight, piece. Make a great spoon. I want to talk a little bit about the process, and the woods that we'll be using. I've got some different woods here. This is what we'll start with. And this is what we'll end up with right here. I've got several different species here. This one is one I made out of peach wood. This is walnut, hackberry, chinaberry, all different woods. And different shapes and sizes, and often times the log will actually denote the shape and the size. First of all, let's start with the material. I've got a piece of hackberry here. We've got some pecan. Here's a piece of pecan here. Pecan works well. Even chinaberry. Here's a piece of chinaberry. I actually cut this down out of the woods. Some of these others I got out of the firewood pile. And that's the great thing about this, is you can use small pieces that you find in the firewood pile. There's a couple things that you want to look for, though, when you're selecting wood. One is you want to look at the grain. And you can see by looking at this bark here, you can see how the bark is fairly straight. So that means inside the grain is going to be fairly straight right here. So you see this is nice and straight. So this should split well. Here's a piece of hackberry. Hackberry oftentimes can have knots and things in it. You can see there's a knot right there. And it may split all right. But you may have some problems with that. Some of the woods that you don't want to use are words such as this one here, that's got a big knot. Although you can try to split it, it's going to pose a problem. And it may not work. Another wood here is this piece of-- I believe this is pecan, but I might be wrong. Sometimes difficult to tell. But this dry, very dry. Actually, so dry you'll see here it's starting to rot. And I can tell that by these black lines. That's actually spalted, which is the stage right before it's ready to rot. So you'll notice I'm using here all green wood. This is green woodworking. It's very important to use green wood for this. So if you go to the firewood pile, make sure that the wood has been freshly cut, that it's still wet on the end, and that will work the best. Let's split a piece of this hackberry here. Both of these woods are referred to by some as trash trees. But they often make nice spoons. I also like to use fruit woods. I've got a piece of peach over here. And this is a piece of peach. Of course, this is the center part of the tree right here. And we might run into some problems when we split this. You never know until you split it. So let's begin by splitting. The tools that I'm going to use for splitting are a froe. This is a froe here. And I need a froe club. You can see this one is well used, almost ready for replacement. But you use this to strike the top of the froe like this. If I used a metal hammer on this, it would tend to flare this part out and mess up the froe. I'll also be using a regular splitting maul and a couple metal wedges if the grain really difficult to work. I've got a hatchet that I'll actually be using for shaping the wood. Let's start by splitting some wood here. Always want to start by splitting directly in the center. If I split in the center, then it puts equal pressure on either side of this split. And it's going to open up right in the center, opposed to starting off here. If I start right off here, the grain is going to tend to run out. It's not going to split well. So we're going to start right in the center. And set it there. Again, as I said, you never know what's inside of this tree until we split it. So let's just start by splitting. that's a couple times. You can see it's starting to split right there. Let's work it a little bit more. Now the advantage of the froe is that I can set this on the ground, and use pressure, and twist it like this. Sometimes, as you can see, this one's pretty hard to twist. So you can also use a crook in a tree and split it that way. So you can set it into the crook of a tree to help brace it as you work it. You'll notice now I've got pressure right in there. And I can work it straight down. Of course, this works on a longer piece. Just work it just like that. And there we have it. These smaller pieces can be a little difficult as well. Almost. There we go. This is tough wood. Now you see how I'm leveraging this piece, leveraging this down, and working it right down, all the way down. And there we have it. So now we can see what's inside, just like this. What we have here is we've got a nice piece. Got a little bit a curve that way, not a problem. We'll actually make the handle a little bit curved, to follow the grain here. We've got the pith, which is the center part of the tree. I want to try to cut that out, and we'll do that. Let me show you how some other wood split. We'll set this aside. And I'll show you a piece of this chinaberry. Let's split right down here, like this. Again we'll start with the froe. And again, starting right in the center, look at how easy that splits there. Here we go, just work that down, taking this. That splits nice. And there we go. This is obviously a lot softer material. But it carves well. This would make a beautiful spoon right here. So let's begin by-- I see a little crack right here. So I'm going to save this one for the firewood pile. And let's look at this one this one looks a little bit better, although has a little bit of a crack there. But I think this one will work. The next step is to use a hatchet to start carving this into the shape of a spoon. I actually just recently made this hatchet. Our blacksmith actually learned in Sweden how to make axes, and then taught us how to make them. So this is my first attempt at making a forged tool. And I'm really happy with it. But I'm going to start by shaping this, rough shaping it, with a hatchet. You'll notice the technique that I'm going to use here is sort of a chopping and then splitting. So I'm actually going to come in here and make a chopping cut like this, and then come down and split those chunks off. So you see I'm using the actual grain to my advantage. Again, in like this. And then come down here and work it down. I must say you've got to use caution using this hatchet. It's obviously razor sharp. This is razor sharp. And one errant blow with it could cause problems. A couple things is you want to keep this leg back slightly, and work it like this. I don't want to stand here chunked up like this. If I do this I'll do short strokes. But if I'm going to be swinging the axe I want to keep my leg back, and work it like this. Of course my left hand in this case is up out of the way. So I'm just going to work this down, flattening this part up right here like this. I'm going to work this part off here. This is going to be the bottom part, the actual bottom of the bowl right here. So I'm going to flatten this up just a little bit. And this part up here, I think I"m going to make the handle. Again you see those stop cuts all along there like this. And then you can come off and clean that up. Again, coming in like this. Then working that down, just like so. Each one just splits off. You're using the grain. You're using the splitting action, works right off. This is a double bevel hatchet, so I can work it in curves, and things like that. But I can also hew with it. You'll also notice that I'm choked up tighter near the head, which is also a safety thing. If I'm back here like this, I'm going to have more swing, more power behind the head, but not as much control. And if I want to take off a large chunk I'll hold my hand back here. But if I want more of a precision cut I'll hold my hand up closer to the head. Even more precision, I'll be up here like this if I want to do a nice controlled cut. You'll see that later. You'll also notice, too, that I can use a slicing motion. If I bring the hatchet around like this and bring it back, in a circular motion, I'll slice through the grain. As opposed to just working straight down like this, I'm going to work it like this. And it slices it, and cuts very effectively. At this point I want to sketch on the board here a general shape. And I've done it both ways, where I just do by eye, just let the log make its own shape as I shape it. But sketching it isn't a bad idea, especially if this is your first attempt at this. You may want to sketch it out. Again, this is sculptural woodworking. So really there's no set shape. You want it to generally look like a spoon. But let your imagination go with this, and make something that looks pleasing. And let the grain follow. If I had a curved grain, that might be a feature. I'd add that into the spoon. You want to let the shape of the spoon follow the grain. So here we are. We're going to shape this out like this. Now there's a couple things I could do. At this stage, I could go ahead and carved the bowl while this is in a somewhat flat state like this. We could clamp it down here to a workbench, and carve the bowl out. I could also start by working in and cutting off this waste right in here. And I'm going to do that by using a saw. I'm going to come in here. And I could even use just the hatchet as well. But I'll show you. What we'll do is we'll come in here and we'll cut this in here with a saw. And we'll split this piece off right there. Again, the goal here is just to remove material, and remove it as fast ad effectively as possible. So putting the hatched aside, let me get the saw. So what I'm going to do here is make a stop cut with the saw. You'll notice I've been working with the splitting tools, the hatchet, and the froe and such for splitting with the grain. But for cutting across the grain, I've got to use a saw. So we're just come in like this, and make a stop cut just like so, right down close to my line, like that. Again, I'm on the outside of the edge of the perimeter of the spoon. So I don't risk cutting into the spoon. I'm using a crosscut saw here. This is different than a rip saw. In later videos we'll show you how we sharpen a saw, and talk more about the difference between a rip and a crosscut saw. But you want to use a sharp saw for this. So you'll see what I've done here is I've made two stops cuts here, right at the neck of the spoon. And then we're going to come across here and split that off. And that'll remove the bulk of that material. Back to the froe. And again, I'm going to break the rule here of splitting it off center. But if I split it off center, the tendency is going to be for it to want to fall off more on this side, which is fine in this case. Again there's always the risk of ruining it. But the worst thing that could happen is I have another piece of firewood. So you see how I'm working that down. And I'm watching the grain, the split line. You see, there's the split line right there. And it's just not right to the saw cut. So let's look at the other side. Well it is to the saw cut on that side. What I want to do is I want to make that saw cut just a little bit deeper right there, so I can split that off. Let's go ahead and work this side. Again, let's say a little bit on the outside of the line. There's the grain. The grain's working this way. Let's look at this side. It's going in like this. Let's watch it, make sure that we're not going to ruin this. And work that down. Again, just working that off like that. And looks like I didn't cut deep enough there. So we'll just cut that just a little bit deeper, and go ahead and split that right off. There's that piece. And we'll come back here. And there's that piece. So now, starting to look a little bit like a spoon. What we can do now is we'll start working the shape of the head. And I'm going to come in here again, using those cuts like this, stop cuts, and work the outside shape of this. If you'll notice, for the more controlled cut, I'm working up closer just like this. I get more of a controlled cut, following that line, working it there nice and easy, split it down. Work it down like that. Now you'll notice I've got to cut this up in here. And my hands are closer to the blade. So you'll notice I've choked up a lot more near the head. You get a lot more controlled, safer cut that way. Working this down, just like so. Now the weakest part of the spoon is right here in the neck, right there. That's where all the stress of the spoon is. What I want to try to do is create what I call a keel, which is right in here. And it's actually going to be thicker right there, and then get thinner right on the side. So I want to keep that in mind as I'm carving away. Working the back of a spoon right there. Working in this part just right up in there. Now let's work this part off, making those stop cuts and then coming down, splitting it off. I'm going to go ahead and thin this out just a little bit in there. Let's shape around the outside shape of this, just a little bit more. Looks pretty good. We can always shape it more. Let's work on just this part right in here. This is where the bowl is going to be. I want to smooth that up nicely. Again, here's that motion, slicing it, getting a nice, broad, even stroke. There we have it. We're now ready to carve the bowl out for the spoon. And I'm here at the bench. And the reason why I've chosen to use the bench is because I want to hold the work down while I carve it. I've got a holdfast here. Basically you could use any flat surface with some 3/4 inch holes drilled in it. And the holdfast will lock in place. Pound the holdfast down. It locks it down so we can carve it out. I'm going to go ahead and reinforce the line on here, in the shape that I want my bowl to be carved. I'm going to use a gouge here. This is a seven sweep 25 millimeter wide Swiss gouge. And begin by carving this using a wooden mallet. If you'll notice, what I'm doing here is I'm working from the top of the bowl to the center. So work like this. You'll also notice I am using a wooden mallet as opposed to a metal hammer. Main reason for that, if I used a metal hammer I would mushroom the end of the gouge here. One thing I want to point out here is the grain direction. As we mentioned earlier, we're splitting with the grain. We're doing the same thing here when we're cutting this bowl out. We're splitting the wood. You can see as we cut this down it's splitting out. And we're trying to remove the bowl. But I think it's important to illustrate how the grain works, especially on a curved surface. If you imagine the grain is like a series of straws, and if I have these straws right in here like this, and if I carve down into the straws, they're are going to be fine. But if I come up on this side-- here's the straws like this-- look what happens. They all break up like that. This might be illustrated easier by showing you on a board here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to draw a curve simulating the shape of the bowl. So here's the bowl, like this. And my goal is just to try to take that out. What I'm going to is I'm going to make a stop cut with a saw, down to the line right there. This will just help illustrate it. Now I'm going to come in with the gouge, and work like this towards the center. And you can see how its splitting off. Now as I work down like this, if I was to work up and to continue working, you can see the trouble we're in right here. It's splitting off right there. So that's why you've got to work from the top of the bowl to the center of the bowl, just like that. And you can see, again, working from both sides. Always keeping the chisel going away from you. Keep both hands behind the chisels edge for safety reasons. And you can see we're working right to there. But as soon as I go past the center point, see what happens? It's starting to split and continue. It'll continue and you'll break the bowl. So what we're doing here is we're working from the top down to the center, all the way around, working from both sides to the center. Working that off. I can even work across the grain, but I've got to watch it. Work it around like this. I'm going to go fairly deep here, because I have a lot of material to work with. And I think this will make a great little spoon for stirring a deep pot of soup. You'll notice that I'm using the mallet to rough remove the stock. And the reason why I'm doing that is if I push this with hand pressure, I wouldn't have as much control. And I'm removing a lot of material. So I have a lot of control by using the mallet. Because the mallet only forces the chisel as far as the stroke allows. Whereas if I'm pushing this, I could slip and ruin the spoon. Now when I get closer to my final shape, I will go ahead and pushed the gouge through to clean it up. But for rough removal, I'm going to use the mallet, working always from the top the outside. You'll notice that I've left a rim here, a perimeter that I can clean up later. Now they make a gouge that's called a spoon gouge. And it's actually curved. It's got a shape like this, curves like this. They work all right when you're doing a deep bowl like I'm doing here. The problem with it is when you're striking with the mallet, the force is not directed all the way through as it is on this one. When I strike this gouge with the mallet, the force goes all the way through, right through the gouge, right to that cutting edge. Now with a spoon bent gouge, it's doesn't work as effectively, because you have a curve to the gouge. And the force is not directed all the way to the cutting edge. Again, it would work as I get closer down in here. I could use a spoon gouge as I clean this out. But this one works just fine. This is a Swiss made 725. It's one that I found. I've also used a number eight, which is going to be a little tighter sweep. The first number indicates the sweep. The second number here indicates the width of the gouge. So I'm coming in here. You'll notice what I'm doing here is I've got my hand braced against the spoon. And I'm working it with my other hand as I work this around like this. If I was out here like this, I don't have as much control as I do if I'm braced like this. Again, this is for a paring cut. Work it around, again working from the top all the way to the center. A word of caution here. Always keep the edge going away from you. Keep both hands behind the cutting edge. I'm going to go ahead and turn this around, so that I can work the other side. Again, like this. And I think that will do. I'm actually going to show you a way to clean this up. But we've got to go back to roughing it out more with the hatchet. So let's go back outside. We'll see you there. What I want to do it here is I want to keep this fat right in here. This is the keel. Think of the keel on a ship. That gives you a more strength right in here. So this will be thinner right in here, right at the neck of the spoon. Fatter this way, and then thin out right in here. Working on the handle now, to just thin this out. You'll notice as I work up closer an get closer to my shape here with the spoon, I'll be working closer to my hands. And again, that's a safety issue here. And as I mentioned earlier, you can control the hatchet more safely by holding it up closer to the head, just like this. So I"m taking shorter strokes as opposed to here. I'm not back here like this is, especially as I get closer to my fingers. I've got to watch my fingers. One missed blow with a sharp hatchet like this could remove my fingers. Now I'm going to work the outside edge here. One thing I want to be conscious of here is the shape of the spoon, the outside shape, following the contour the spoon. I don't want to cut into this part of the spoon. So I'm constantly feeling. Obviously I have a lot of wood here that I've got to remove. But I want to keep that in mind, especially as I shape this outside part of the spoon. I'm going to work this down like this. Again feeling here. Let's work this outside here, work this. I can split this off. But I want to be careful that I don't take too much off. So I'm going to just watch that, shape this outside part. That's just about right. There we go. That's still looking a bit crude. But we'll actually come back with a drawknife in just a moment here. And we'll finish shaping this. This will shape up just nicely with a drawknife. Work this just a little bit more here. You can stop at any point here and go to the drawknife. And I'm fixing to do that now. You can see we're starting to get a little bit precarious out here, with my hand close to the hatchet. So I think we ought to go right to the drawknife. We finished up outside. And I'm here at the shaving horse. This is a great tool for holding the spoon while we shape it. And this tool actually clamps it down. There's different styles of shaving horses. I like this one, because when I put pressure with my feet and I pull like this, it creates a circular motion, which actually holds this in place. Very strong. So it works well. Of course you want to keep it from coming out and hitting you. You can actually buy these. We sell these. Or you can make your own. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to use a drawknife. Basically, a drawknife is, as the name implies, a knife that you draw towards yourself. And we'll use this to finish shaping the outside of the spoon. Hold this in place. And work this down. Again this is a sharp tool that you're drawing toward yourself. You've got to be careful. The only time that I've actually gotten cut is mishandling the tool, that is if you put it down and you actually run your finger across the edge. So you've got to watch that. I'm working in this off. And you'll notice how I'm skewing the knife. So as I skew it, I use more of the blade, as opposed to just pulling it through, straight like this. I'm skewing it like this. Again, thinking about the grain direction, as we talked about earlier, on the spoon. I've got to constantly think about which way is that grain going. If you'll notice I'm working with the grain. I've got to constantly be conscious of which way the grain is going. And you'll notice how it just comes off nicely. Now if I come back here like this, you see how it digs in. That's because I'm going against the grain. And if you'll notice, this piece will just chip right off and ruin the spoon. I've got to work with the grain. How I would deal with that is I turn the knife around, and come back like this. Again, skewing the knife. If I push it like this, I'm just pushing the blade through. And it's not going to cut as effectively as if I skewed the knife and slice it, making a skewing. That is turned it to a side, and then slicing through the wood. Working it just like this. You see here I'm working against the grain. So I'm going to come back this way, and work it all along here, along this edge. The key to all of these tools is having sharp tools. And we'll go over sharpening in a later video series. But having sharp tools is a number one key. So we're starting to shape this. You can see I've got this. I can feel it. We're going a little bit close. I want to stay. Don't want to take off too much here. And I'm going to work it down a little bit more. I've got to obviously shape this curve here. So I'm going to put this in the shaving horse, clamp this down. Working this way again, I don't want to start up here. Starting from the top of the curve and working downhill like this. As I get down here, I'm going to slice it to the side, work it along like this. Flip it over like this. Again we'll work from the top, going all the way down, watching the perimeter. I want to leave a little flat spot there. Work it down. Once I get that somewhat close, let's turn our attention towards the handle. Now I want to keep in mind I've left a fair amount of wood here. So that when I stick this and I clamp it down, it doesn't break the bowl. So let's work this. This is a Swedish style spoon. It's a bit flat right in here, and then going to the keel back here you can shape it however you want. If you want to just do a round handle you can. This is going to have somewhat of a flat handle. And I'm going to put a nice bevel right back in here. Let's work this down a little bit more. This shaving horse is adjustable. So you can pull this up. It's got a ratchet mechanism here, which adjust this, depending on the size stock that you're working with. Put that in. We'll move it up one more notch. And we'll put this in like this. Now I'm going to work this part right in here. We'll start working that keel back here, working this like this. Again, as I mentioned earlier, green wood is the key. If you were doing with dry wood, it just would not work the same. You'd be forcing the tool through the wood. I'm using wet wood. The moisture in the wood is helping me to work. Now one may say, when this dries out it may split. That's true. But if I work it down to close dimensions it will not split, as long as it's close. Now what I want to do is, if I'm going to take a break here and maybe in a day or so come back and work it and it's still thick, I'll put it in a plastic bag. That will reduce the drying. Because if it's still thick, it may crack. As it gets down thinner to the spoon shape, we will not have the cracking. And you may have a little bit of cracking. But if we put the finish on it, that will reduce that. And it will also seal the wood. You shouldn't have a problem. I've made several of these right from the log. Again, I cut this yesterday. So this is green. I made several of these spoons right from the log, and I have not had a problem with the cracking. Work this down just a little bit more, thinning that handle out. This drawknife will work so well. You can buy drawknives from different suppliers. Lie-Nielsen makes one. But this is an old one that I picked up. And it works great. Let's work this down. Still a little fat right in here. So we've got to work this down in here like this. Working this down. Again, it's a sculptural type work, so you make it how you want it to look. In this type of work there's no such thing as a mistake. It's just an opportunity for design change. I think I'm going to do a nice V shape right in there. I think that'll look nice, make that transition from the handle to the bowl. And that's somewhat traditional for this kind of spoon, this Swedish style spoon to have a sharp transition there. But again you can make it however you want. Let's work this down. There, just make that V nice and symmetrical on both sides. Getting there. Let's work just a little bit more. I may turn now to a spokeshave. That's a great tool. Just a little bit more work in here, and then I'll show you what the spokeshave is. I'm going to pull this back just a little bit. That's roughed out. Let's do a little bit of work up here. We haven't touched this too much. We'll just clean this up. Again, if I go straight like this, it's going to have the tendency to ride in and out of the inconsistencies that are here in the stock. So If I skew it like this, it's going to skew across the surface, thus making the surface flat and fair. Let's work this top of the bowl right here, smooth this out. Just flatten that out. And that'll give me a better idea. I can see that I've got to work, obviously, this side right here. And that'll be great work with the spokeshave. Nice, OK. Now starting to look like a spoon, maybe with a stretch of the imagination. Now we want to go to the spokeshave. I've got a couple different spokeshaves here. I've got a metal spokeshave. This is a Stanley 51. The Stanley 151 has a little adjuster on the top here. This was actually my grandfather's spokeshave. And this is a wooden spokeshave, actually one that I made. The main difference between these two is, if you look here, we've got the sole of the spokeshave here, and the blade in here like this. This one's actually bevel down. And this one is bevel up. Blade is more flat, like this. I like this spokeshave for doing endgrain work and for rough removal. So I actually start with this one, and then maybe go to this one. We'll start by working on the outside here. And I'm going to work this, pulling it towards myself, working around the bowl. Again, I'm conscious of the grain. If I start here, I can feel it. I can hear it. You can hear it, whereas there you get a nice, even tone. So you're listening. You're watching. You're feeling the wood. Let's work this around like this. You see we're starting to get that nice shape. Let's come in here like this. Work that back of the bowl here. Feeling it, make sure we don't have any thin spots. Feels pretty good. What I want to do here is I want to flip this over, and try to get this outline here to look nice. You can draw that in, or you can just let the tool do that for you as you work it around. What I'm doing is I'm shaping this profile. So here's the grain going straight like this. I'm starting at this point and working down. If I start here, I'm going to be pulling against the grain, whereas if I start here from the top of that curve, work down in here like this. This is always the trickiest part of the spoon, right here at the end, this end grain. All the fibers are coming like this. And it's tricky to get the top of it. The best way to work that is to skew it, working it at an angle. You see, again, just like we were doing with the drawknife, skewing it down like this, working it slicing it. Just like this, slicing. Still leaving a little rim around the edge. And the grain will tell you if you're working against it. I'm going to go around. You see how we have a sharp point right here? I'm going to go around and put a chamfer around that edge. Just come along in here. That'll soften that. That'll preempt any breakage of the edge there. If it had a sharp point, it could chip off. So by putting a chamfer. There it preempts that. You could even do a roundover as opposed to a chamfer. Let's start shaping the handle now. You'll see how it comes off. We've got a little flat spot there. Whenever I'm trying to shape a spoon, or even a piece of furniture, I'm always looking at it. And I want to have an even, fair, curve. If it's supposed to be straight, that's fine. But if I want it curved, I want the curve to be fair. That is, to be a nice, gentle curve with no flat spots in it. I've got to watch that, don't put too much pressure there. I'll work this down. You can even support it with your hand like this. Let's put a bevel back this way. That'll soften the top edge. See how I switched the spokeshave? I worked from the top down this way. But then because of the curve, I've got to work from the top down, as opposed to coming in. You can see this little chip right there is actually because I went too far with the spokeshave, and it starts lifting into that grain. So we'll just work it back down from the top downhill, working like this. We've got to do a little bit more work on the keel here. Let's try to work that up. Because I've chosen to do a nice sharp point there, I may actually use a knife to clean that up. And I'll show you that in just a minute. Working this down here, feeling it, trying to make it nice and round. The grain really comes alive. It's amazing. Just a short while ago this was once just a piece of firewood, or even a tree. Now we have something that we can use, a nice spoon, here. You can see the grain in it, lovely grain lines there. Let's work this down just a little bit more here. As we get closer, I'm going to change to the metal spokeshave. And I can set this a little bit finer. And we'll work this, just try to clean all of this up here. Clean this up. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to show you another method for working this using a Swedish style carving knife. This is a Swedish style carving knife here. You've got to be careful using a knife, obviously, on this. And there's a couple safety things that I'm going to keep in mind. One is if I hold the piece like this and I work it like this, I can slice it towards that V. Another method here, we'll turn it around. We'll work it in here. Another thing I'll do is I'll even work it like this where, I put my hand behind it and slice it. Again, you've got to be careful using a knife. And what you might try is, on your first spoon, maybe don't do this sharp juncture right there. You could do a nice smooth transition, so you don't have to use a knife. But I thought I'd show you this technique of using the knife. Because it enables you to be able to do things that you can't do with some of these other tools. I'm working the neck of the spoon now with the knife. The knife enables me to be able to get in this tight curve, and work this out here, work this back this way, always conscious of where that blade is going to go if it does slip. So watch that. Working it back like this. It's best if you can support the knife with your opposite hand. You see we've got that nice V shape there. Let's work this chamfer. Let's continue this chamfer around here like this. Working that around. We'll come in here. I want to continue this chamfer now. And it's going to actually come up in here and stop at that V. Using the same technique that we used with the drawknife, slicing the knife, using the whole life, as opposed to just pushing the knife. We're actually slicing with the knife. Now I'm necking going down thinner right in here, more for visual. I don't have to worry about it, because I do have the thickness right here, here in the keel. But I think that's about as thin as I want to go this way. And again, this is really up to your personal preference. We could make this totally round. As you see, we've got this little keel here, which I might work down a little bit more. Coming in here, working that. You can also work the knife around like this. Just watch your thumb. There's another Swedish knife that you can use that's actually called a hook knife. And that's this one here. This one's great for cleaning up the inside of the bowl. You can work this right along in here, cleaning up the inside of the circle, just like this. I can work it around the edge. Now if you'll notice, I'm working across the grain. This is big bowl. So you've got to work it around, work it across the grain. If you don't have a Swedish hook knife don't worry. You don't have to have one. It just works sometimes for cleaning up this. I'm going to continue that chamfer right around there. That'll even up the top. And I think we'll call this done. Now there's a couple things you can do with this to finish it. You can scrape it smooth if you want. I'm not a big fan of sandpaper, especially we've carved all this by hand. And sandpaper tends to fuzz things over. And you lose some of the definition that the tools put into the work. But you can sand it if you want. You can leave it where you have these facets on there. Or you can even scrape it, as well. Green wood doesn't scrape as good as dry wood does. But I'll show. I've got this. We'll scrape this. And then I'll show you on a dry piece how it scrapes as well. Just going to clean this up just a little bit more. Let me show you the scraper. I've got a few different scrapers here. One is a thick cabinet scraper. And this works well on broader surfaces. I've got a thin, nice, flexible scraper. I actually made this from a razor saw. Filed the teeth off of it. It's nice and flexible. And then a curved scraper. You can guess what this is. This is for doing the bowl, the inside part. And the way you do this is you pull it towards you. You can see it's scraping those nice little curls off of there, smoothing it up. Now having a sharp scraper is the key. You've got to have a sharp scraper. And we'll show you in later videos how to sharpen a scraper. The way this works is it has a burr on it. And the burr is actually cutting. Even put it inside the vice, and work with two hands like this. I'm going to use the thicker scraper to actually scrape this flat area right in here. The wood is a little fuzzy because it's green. And after it dries out, even after a few days, it'll scrape even easier. The flexible scraper is great for the bowl. You see it will flex right around this area here. Feel that burr. Again, if you want the tool marks, you can skip the scraping. And I think the tool marks add a lot of character, as well. I want to show you the difference between two surfaces on these spoons, and how the different services will look, and different ways to approach finishing it. This is the spoon that I just carved. And you can see it's got some surface texture to it. I've actually gone back with the knife, because the scraper on Greenwood tends to fuzz it up a little bit. So I've gone back with the knife, and I've cleaned up some of those little fuzz marks. But I want to show you-- I've got one that I've actually had since 2011, last year. I've got this one here that is good and dry. You don't have to wait a year before you can scrape it. Actually, just a few days works just fine. But I've got this one I've had laying here. And I'm going to scrape this one. So you can see the kind of finish that we can get on a dry spoon. It's going to be different. And then we'll oil both of them. And you'll get to see the difference between the surface on the spoon, as well as the other one. Because the wood is dry, it's harder. So it tends to scrape smoother. You'll get a smoother finish, as opposed to a fuzzy finish. So I'm going to work this down. You can see there's even a polish on there, a nice polish. A the flexible scraper works great on a curved surface, like I've done here, as opposed to a nice thick scraper like this one. It doesn't flex around the curves of the surface. And it will work on a broader, flatter, surface. But isn't as effective as these flexible scrapers. We'll do a little work on the inside. Those are nice shavings there. Let's go ahead and work this out. We'll just clean this up. And again, this is for more of a refined look, if you want a more smooth look. And I said I don't usually use sandpaper. But if I do want a refined look, well I will at least use some 220 sandpaper. So I've got some here. A quick rubbing over the surface will even out any inconsistencies of the scraper. It also brings the surface to a nice even texture. Again, I'm not using the same paper to shape the surface of the spoon. I'm using the same paper to bring the surfaces to an even texture. Well now that we've got these ready for finish, let's go to the bench. And we'll go ahead and put a finish on them. I like to use mineral oil. It's readily available. You can also use other food safe oils, such as flaxseed oil or even walnut oil, olive oil, vegetable oil. You have to be careful with vegetable oil, because that can go rancid over time. So I just some mineral oil. This spoon is the one that we've scraped and sanded. So the surface is smoother because it's drier. When you scrape it, the surface is smoother. This one we've worked. It's still got the texture spokeshave and the knife. So I'll put a finish on both of these. And you'll get to see the wood just come alive. I'll even pour a little bit right inside the bowl. Might as well use the bowl. And then just soak it on the rest. You want to put it on fairly heavy. And it will soak in to the pores. I'll put this off, aside to dry for a little bit. And then I'll wipe off the excess. There's that one. I'll go ahead and put some finish on this one. This is going to be less likely to soak in the oil, because it needs to dry out a little bit more. But it's surprising how fast it really does dry, even though I cut this yesterday and it was sopping wet. As you work it down, because we've worked it nice and thin like this, the wood will dry out pretty fast. I think my favorite part about spoons like this is you have the character marks. If you can see this, you can see the light reflecting off of the facets that were created by the knife and the spokeshave. And for me that's the rewarding part about making spoons, especially making them directly from the log. Every one is unique, different. The grain is different. The shape is different. And we have something that we've created right from the log and that we can use. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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Rough Shaping the Spoon

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Carving the Bowl

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Shaping the Handle

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Finishing the Spoon

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