One Knife Spoon

[Kepis]

Following a comment made by OrtesPL earlier on my Simple Stirrer spoon thread, i was reminded about a challenge a Norwegian friend gave me a couple of years back, which was to make a spoon using one knife only.

So here goes..

My knife of choice is my HVK and the wood is fresh cut Hazel.

2 by Mark D Emery, on Flickr

First job, split the Hazel into halves

3 by Mark D Emery, on Flickr

4 by Mark D Emery, on Flickr

Truncate the area where the bowl is going to be

5 by Mark D Emery, on Flickr

and carve that area away

6 by Mark D Emery, on Flickr

Carve out the handle on each side

7 by Mark D Emery, on Flickr

Then flatten the top of the bowl

8 by Mark D Emery, on Flickr

You now have your rough blank which can be whittled as normal

1 by Mark D Emery, on Flickr

9 by Mark D Emery, on Flickr

To hollow out the bowl you can score the top surface of the bowl and lever out the wood fibres to make a shallow depression, unfortunately i cant find the photos of that process at the moment, if i do i'll upload them later.

 

[WealdenWoodsman]

Lovely job!

 

[Dave Budd]

Back in the mists of time, before bushcraft was a thing (I think a young chap called Raymond was on a show called Tracks), I used to make spoons at my field archery club. I'd pick up a stick at the beginning of the course and whittle away with the knife on my belt (for digging arrows from trees) and then by the time I got around the course and back to the tea hut we would have a new teaspoon in the pot It must've been another decade before I found hook knives to hollow the bowl out instead of the tip of my knife.

 

[Kepis]

Back in the mists of time, before bushcraft was a thing (I think a young chap called Raymond was on a show called Tracks), I used to make spoons at my field archery club. I'd pick up a stick at the beginning of the course and whittle away with the knife on my belt (for digging arrows from trees) and then by the time I got around the course and back to the tea hut we would have a new teaspoon in the pot It must've been another decade before I found hook knives to hollow the bowl out instead of the tip of my knife.

We used to do similar, except ours used to end up as pointy sticks and not a lot else at the time

 

[Robson Valley]

+1 for fresh, green wood. Really the very best texture to learn with.
Most woods, hardwoods for sure, turn from cheese to bone as they dry. Lime, very little.

Kepis: Working out from the center of the bowl,
could you deepen that with a progressively bigger and bigger spiral with your knife tip?
Great demo for starters. Thank you.

 

[woodsorrel]

Very nice!

- Woodsorrel