New Spoon Carver

[OldDarkOne]

2ndspoon22.JPG (28 KiB) Viewed 6572 times

Greetings! I am Jeff Rich from Central Indiana, USA.
I have stumbled upon spoon carving and it has taken hold! Much like the turning bug!
I have been woodworking of some form or the other for most of my life.
I have been turning semi-pro for the last 10 years.
I make a variety of bowls and goblets and a few other trinkets.
Here is a picture of my most recent and second spoon.

[simon]

Great second spoon. Keep going, the first 1000 are the hardest.

[ToneWood]

Welcome Jeff. The Swedes/Scandinavians have a tradition of spoon carving and have some interesting designs & insights - I find the books by Wille Sundqvist & his son Jogge Sundqvist interesting and useful (& Jogge's DVD). But suggest that you browse this forum first & see what others have done. You might want to google for some images too - several forum members have interesting and inspiring examples on their own websites (e.g. Robin Wood, Peter Follansbee, David Fisher sometimes). Images & on-line videos of Spoonfest - which features several top spoon carvers each year - are often worth viewing. Barn the Spoon in the UK & Drew Langsner's Country Workshops website in the USA are other places to look.

Also, check out US forum member Jarrod StoneDahl's spoon carving video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... dB_Tr3eX1w
& website (which feature his "spoon horse") too: http://jarrodstonedahl.blogspot.co.uk/

[Steve Martin]

Welcome! and Greetings!

My Father grew up in Greenfield. Other family are still in Indiana, so special welcome. There is also a site on Face book re: spoon carving. It is not accepting new members because of the explosive growth but I think you can still look. there may be a spoon carving event in the USA later this year.

[OldDarkOne]

Thanks!
I have ordered the recently re-released Swedish Carving Techniques.
I am finding the some carving knives are less than desirable as they will not hold an edge.
I have a couple of good knives from Del Stubbs coming soon.
My first choice of using Silver Maple may not have been the best.
Tim Cooper is planning to have a Northern Indiana get together this year, posted on Facebook.

[ToneWood]

Del Stubbs has an excellent reputation. The straight Mora/Eric Frost carving knives (106 & 120) use laminated steel (Rockwell 59 & 62 I think) and can be purchased at reasonable prices, they seem as good as a woodcarving knife needs too be. I'm not so keen on the Mora hook-knives but they do the job. Actually, I haven't found a spoon knife that I am happy with yet - I have a Mora 164 and the highly rated HK spoon knife, which is very good in many ways but I often find the curve a bit too uniform & the bottom a bit too deep & flat to do what I want to do (perhaps just my my lack of experience, still haven't made many spoon) - my spoons all seem to end up with deep egg-shaped bowls . I would like to try a shallower spoon knife, with a different curve shape/geometry - maybe something by Nic Westerman/Ben Orford/SD/etc. (or Del Stubbs in the USA).
106

I recently purchased one of the wider Mora "Classic" Sloyd knives (below), the smallest one 2/0 (dinky like a pen knife in size) I like it a lot but haven't done much with it yet - mine was reasonably priced (from MoonrakerKnives.co.uk) but doesn't have a laminated steel blade ; Mora do offer their sloyd/classic knives with laminated steel blades but unfortunately at a huge premium . However, I have a couple of cheap but good Mora Clipper utility/buscraft knives which are just carbon steel and they take and hold an edge remarkably well.
Classic 2/0
Re. silver maple, member BullDawg (Phil) has done some beautiful stuff with maple which has that amazing 3-D figuring effect.