Spoons...

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.