Swedish Spoon Carving

Last weekend, I finally got my hands on some paper birch to carve into spoons. I'd been struggling with my occasional spoon carving efforts chalking up my problems to not grasping technique or quite the right tools. As it turns out half my problem was attempting to make dry wood serve my purpose.

I have a small dream to live on a tiny homestead with a girl, raise rabbits, chickens, maybe a pig or dairy goats and lots of food crops. Chopping wood, baking bread and carving bowls and spoons. This week I've been making huge progress on the spoon carving, I've had in axe in my hand or been carving on my lunch breaks and sometimes for a few hours in the evening after work. I'll show my progress sequentially...

Everything together, tools and the spoons I've carved so far. They are in order from left to right. The last four are ones I feel best about. I'll test paints and practice carving details on the first two trashy ones. 

 Here's a shot of the bowl on the third (and beginning of the better looking spoons), it needs a little refinement but I'm starting to get happy here.

 Here is the beginning of the 5th scoop, for serving. The tape on my thumb is to give it a break from all the pressure against the blade and blank. I don't have a callous here yet and I wore through my finger with a few days of heavy carving.

 Here's the underside or keel of that same scoop. It has nicer lines and is more left/right symmetrical than my earlier attempts. I find the hardest thing about spoons to be getting symmetrical geometry without being ambidextrous. With grain and hand motions some cuts have to be done differently one side to the other. I'm getting better though.

 The wide bevels on this flow from the bowl, to the handle. Refinement is necessary after it dries up a bit.

This is the first one I've planned out some carving and painting for. I have an idea of what I'm going to do here, but need to draw some more.

There are a few people I've been reading about, looking at spoon images or conversing with that have been a huge inspiration. I've got Jogge's video, two wonderful spoons from Jarrod (and a lot of inspiring spoon porn), and a wealth of info, tutorial, history and craft lecture from Robin Wood, Barn the Spoon also has a ton of videos that I've found helpful and a living I find really admirable. I wish there were such a thing as a peddler's license in the US.

There's only a few spoons left in the wood I've got left over, I'll have to find a source for some more green birch, beech, apple or sycamore. Many trees have been taken down on campus but they are ring porous.