Spoon
carving along with bowl turning has become very popular over the last
few years in the UK. The gallery below shows some of the knives that
can be used for carving spoons and some example of carved spoons.
What
wood to use for spoon carving is a regular question we're asked. There
is no real fast rule for what wood to use but when we coming across
any unusual wood we check for any toxcicity issues. Over the years we
have carved a spoon from every wood we've come across,this has helped
us build up a knowledge of what woods carve the easiest and look good.
The
next question we're normally asked is, what knives to use. Here are
some of the knives we have used so far. Frosts/mora knives,no
matter what you might read a basic set of these are a good place to
start to get a feel for spoon carving without breaking the bank. They
are relative cheap at £20'ish per knife and with a bit of tweaking
of the shapening you can have a decent set of knives. Our main straight
carving knives are still Frosts/mora even after many years of spoon
carving. Svante Djarve knives are more than double the
price of the mora's but are vastly superior and come in a variety of
blade lengths and hook curves. Hans Karlsson, we
recently bought a flatter curved hook from this maker and without
doubt it is the best hook knife we have used so far, pure magic. They
tend to be a little more expensive than the Svante Djarve knives but
worth every penny.
There
are many more knife makers that are worth checking out. All these makers
have websites. Ben Orford, Dave Budd,
Pinewood Forge and Nick Westerman, are
just some that we know of. The Flexcut range of carving
knives are good for light carving and do have a place in carving finer
details on spoons. We will post a comment on any further knives we try.