How to Carve a Spoon - Step By Step Beginner Wood Carving Guide

Hi everyone, I'm Brian from Carvings Fun. In this video I'll give you a

step

by

step

guide

on how to

carve

a

spoon

out of a piece of

wood

. Now what you're going to need is some

wood

. some woods that are already pre-cut blank or you can simply get your own piece of wood and then

carve

it as needed. I bought them from someone on eBay. They come in a three piece set where I bought some nuts. walnut and a bit of cherry all at the same time so you get three different types of wood, the walnut will be the softest of the three so if you have the option to choose that one go and get the walnut it will look really nice . choice if you just want to use that one and then the tools you're going to want will be a little more specialized now if you don't have your own set of charcoal

spoon

s, Beaver Craft sells a pretty decent

beginner

set. which comes with all the tools you will need, make sure it has a hook knife, a sloyd knife and a detail knife so you can have several different types of tools, as well as a leather strap and strapping compound, believe.

You can get it for less than forty dollars, it's not a bad deal for what it is and also if you're more into traveling you can buy the flexible cutting spoon jack which is a great option as it comes with a small knife Hook. there as well as a shallow hook knife and a detailed

carving

blade with a great option, but for this video I'm going to carve some walnut and I'm going to use my occ uh set here with my round knife. and my roughing knife here now, if at any point in the video you feel like you're falling behind, go ahead and press pause.

I will have an image on the left side of the screen that shows what the current step is that we can follow. It follows the rhythm of the video, so what I like to do is start shaping the spoon the way I want, from the handle to the scoop. I haven't started hollowing out the middle yet, but what I like to do is take the spoon from about the middle to the point where it starts to go down and then I'll start forming the handle from there. This part we're basically removing a lot of wood, this is probably going to be the easiest part for most of you, just keep in mind that you don't want to remove too much wood at first, we're basically going to rough it out that way if you want to make some designs.

Later you can do that too. In this video, we're not going to do that. I'm just going to make a simple spoon and for the purpose of this video, if some of you have something like a Sloyd knife, you can use that too. Those guys are also very effective at removing a lot of wood very quickly, so if you prefer to use your Sloyd knife, you'll probably use it here for just a second. The Beavercraft Beginner Spoon Carver Set comes with its own Sloyd Knife. in there for one to cover you now, when you start rounding the spoon, you want to figure out how deep you want the spoon this is going to be pretty deep, uh, kind of like I have this one here, so you have to remember that the deepest part depth of your spoon will be right here, so you don't want to cut too much wood at the bottom, but you want to start rounding it off a little bit there, so that's okay.

I'm going to go back to my roughing knife. Here now, what you can do too, which can be somewhat useful if you are removing a lot of wood. Sometimes I like to fix the hand of the knife and just remove the wood with my free hand that way. I'm not moving the knife hand too much, mainly if it requires a lot of force, that way it helps reduce fatigue and prevents you from putting too much power behind your blade and it flying away, it's a little safer. Alright, I'm going to turn this down a little bit more.

This is where I want it now and then at this point what we're going to do is start rounding off the rest of the spoon that we already have. the back started, so what we're going to do is continue this swooping shape around towards the front and then define the bottom of the spoon here, now note the wood grain, the wood grain to It goes like this for me. This way, if I started from here, I would accidentally rip out a bunch of wood. I'll show you what I mean here, so since the grain of the wood goes in this direction, you don't want to make sure you do that.

We're not cutting too much because right here, I don't know if you saw it, it moved very quickly, but you can see where the grain of the wood is starting to separate there, it's actually going to start splitting along this line and it's going to be harder. curve it, so keep the grain of the wood in mind when you are

carving

the spoon or any other type of curved carving because that way you won't tear out too much wood and you won't have to modify it. what you're doing to make up for how much wood you removed there, so here I don't want to accidentally rip out too much wood, so it might come in at a different angle ripping out too much wood there, so start coming. in and cutting along the grain, there we go now depending on how far you want to cut it down to the tip.

I don't like to go all out. I don't like to reduce it to the edge. I like it. leave a little buffer on, maybe more or less for the moment, that way I won't thin the lip too much and it won't become brittle and I don't have to accidentally rework it if I take it on too much. a lot of wood later at this stage we're still roughly shaping the spoon essentially, let's see and also when you're cutting the wood, as the wood arches and tapers right here, if you start cutting like that, you're also going to cut the grain, so you run the risk of accidentally splitting this entire section when it starts curving like this.

You actually have to cut that curve; Otherwise you will rip out a ton of wood and not get it done. I can't go back, so again be careful with the wood grain. I've found that it's best to cut on curves like this part here, especially if the grain runs from the back of the spoon to the tip. Alright, now that we have the shape almost sketched out, let's start removing some of these weird bumps and start smoothing it out like the one we have here. You're okay and that's good enough for now, we'll probably finish this eventually. from the video when we're smoothing everything out, so from here we're going to want to define the handle more, we should already have it roughed out so we can remove a little bit of extra wood and make it smooth all the way and what I like.

What to do at this point is also tune it because it's a big old handle. Personally, I like my handles a little thinner, it's a little easier to hold, but you can make yours as thick or as thin as you like. so I'm just going to break it down right there I think yeah that should be good and sometimes these sketches aren't smooth so at this point it would be good to try to even out any extra wobble that you see there or uh if it's a little bit more skewed, there we go, mine was a little bit it's a little bit of a weird shape, but we can round this side out a little bit more and make it more even, so I'm going to do that with mine real quick now.

So you've got your spoon pretty much roughed out, we're going to finish smoothing it here in a moment, but now we're going to focus on getting this part out here, so switching to our hook knife, we're going to start getting the spoon out. On the inside with our shovel tools, keep in mind that when you are working along the grain, also when you start picking and going against the grain, you could also risk ripping out a bunch of wood on the back. front, so when you pick it up, you can get halfway and then you can tear it off like the front lip.

What I like to do is go in from the sides and go all the way through the fiber. Now, starting off, I like to make just a little indentation. In every way I have a little indicator of where I start and stop. Notice: I'm not actually cutting too much into the wood, I'm just making an outline with a knife, there we go, now that I've got that. I'm just going to go in and start digging and you don't have to dig it all the way out. You can just start scraping the top if you are working with harder wood, you may just be removing. the top layer at a time and slowly working your way down.

I've noticed that with the cherry and the walnut it's a little bit harder to get in there, but the walnut is pretty nice and easy, eventually I start working my towards the center and circling around and when you do this, when you get to a point, you'll want to pay attention to how deep your actual spoon is, um, obviously, you don't want to blow. along the bottom, but you also don't want it to be like super thick wood, uh, like I stop right here, you have all this wood between here and the bottom of the spoon, so it's going to be a little awkward and if you're using it, it's going to be essentially like putting a big piece of wood in your mouth instead of being able to transfer food or similar liquids with it again, we're doing that too, just like I left a little bit of an edge over here leave a little edge around the outside edge like that you'll have extra room to work and adjust when it's time to start fine-tuning everything I don't like to make all the cuts In the beginning, I like to leave a little extra room to work and adjust it a little as needed.

That way I don't accidentally cut anything too much, it's better to trim it and have room to work. instead of cutting it too far and then having to scrape the entire piece of wood off or trying to do something completely different with the charcoal. Okay, I think that's the deepest I'm going to go for this one, just start smoothing it out a little bit. a little bit with the hook knife, get rid of some of the jagged, rough spots, there we go, that's pretty good from time to time, at this point, I'm just going to start moving towards the lip little by little, you don't want to start go too crazy and see that wood grain again that we didn't accidentally tear out a bunch of wood, oh, I almost did, I almost broke the wood grain, let's see if I can fix that a little, maybe don't look at that.

I accidentally blew something and if that happens, don't worry too much. Maybe you can fix it. Maybe I can do something with it here, see if I can fix it and finish the rest. here, so let's see if you accidentally blow it, you might be able to lower that lip up a little bit and see if I can even it out completely. This might end up being more of a shallow spoon than you originally anticipated, which is perfect. Okay, so yeah, just a little bit more around this should be fine, smooth it out so you can reduce the chance of splinters forming in your mouth and okay, so that's pretty much fixed.

Go ahead and smooth this part out here. There's a small crack here I wonder if I can fix that. I'm pretty sure I can. Sometimes this happens. I just worked with it. See if you can fix it. Here we go. Let's move this part a little more. I want to make it a little bit flatter, yeah, there we go, that will work fine now. I'm going to bring this taper in just a little bit here so that it's a little bit more evenly shaped around the edge of the spoon, all good and Basically, at this point you have the spoon completely roughed out and you just want to smooth it out.

You can use sandpaper to do this, which I think is much quicker and comes out really nice and smooth, so that would be a good idea. You can start with about 150 grits and then go up to 220 grits and you'll be fine and when you're doing the inside, just put it on your finger and rub the inside, but you can also spend time carving. It's smooth like I did with this cherry here and I think it gives it a pretty cool look, so what I'm going to do is fast forward through this section here and then I'm going to apply a little bit of finish to it real quick, now that You have the finished spoon, all you need to do is take some mineral oil.

I have some wood block oil here, which I use for my cutting board and I usually just like to pour a little bit on the handle or this part of the spoon that way, it has a little place where it basically holds everything. I'm going to grab it and then start dragging it towards the rest of the body. From here you can just let it sit for an hour or so is what I like to do and then give it a good clean and then it's pretty good. If you are using them, I like to wipe the mineral oil again. coat every maybe five or six washes or something, that way the wood doesn't dry out and it doesn't get too dull or anything like that and once you're done, I have a nice dull type. matted look like this guy here uh mineral oil doesn't harden so it's basically going to be liquid all the time, but it's going to act as an oil barrier between water and food getting into the wood.

Now I will have it all. the links in the description below for all the cutouts and any tools you want to use, so thanks for looking everyone, hope you have a good day.