This is probably more for the carving forum, but we haven't had many pretty picture threads lately, so....

Based on various articles I've seen on the web, I decided to make some "Swedish style" wooden serving spoons for Christmas gifts. For those of you who haven't wandered into this arena, these typically are made from naturally curved limbs of hardwood that has been split along the grain to minimize short grain in the final spoon and give it strength (good descriptions on Peter Follasbee's blog, or you can takle a class). The initial shaping is done with a hatchet while the wood it wet, then worked with knives after they dry a bit. Final decoration is normally some variation of chip carving and shaping the finial and handle.

I used a gnarly red maple branch from our back yard- this one was brushing against the roof of my shed threatening to rub the shingles off an rust my tools, so it had to go. The numerous curves of the branch yielded enough blanks for 10 spoons ranging from 10 to 18 inches long. I don't own a $200 Gransfors carving hatchet, but a sharp old $10 camp hatchet worked fine to get to rough shape. The blanks were left about 1/2 in oversize and left to dry for a week in a paper bag.

The wood was fairly moist at this stage, but had gotten noticeably harder to work. The pro's do all the work with Sloyd knives (straight and hooked blades), but this maple would only let me take small, thin shavings with my freshly sharpened knife due to being so hard. So, in the interest of having something to present to the family, I decided to use a double-bevel carving drawknife to speed up the shaping but I needed a shave horse to use it.

I tied a 3/4 poly rope to the bottom stretcher of my new-ish workbench and looped it over a 40-inch piece of DF 4x4 that was secured to the far end of the bench with a heavy bar clamp. The other end of the rope was made into a loop that hung about 6 inches from the floor. Into this I set another similar length of 4x4 with notches on 2 edges to hold the loop.
bench horse.jpgrough spoons.jpg

To use it, I placed a blank under the rope on the top 4x4, then stood in front with one foot on the suspended 4x4 and pushed down to exert holding force. I used it for drawknife shaping and also for hogging out the inside of the bowls with various gouges. I kept a few pine wedges nearby for stabilizing the blank when doing the bowls, as the general sppon shapes were rounded at this point and wanted to spin. I was surprised how much holding power I got from this rig, especially when pulling or pushing the drawknife- it never let go and sent me flying across the room with a 6-inch razor sharp blade (my main concern).

I'd recommend you try this is you need a quick shave horse or holding station. It worked great on the irregularly shaped spoon blanks - not sure if a straight blank would slide out, but you could always use one of those planks hanging around your neck to stop it like the bodgers do.

As for the spoons, the turned out great (to me) - here are 7 of them: a big ladle in the middle with a burl for a bowl, several serving spoons, and on the right are two stirring/ tasting spoons. I gave my wife a few lessons on chip carving so she could participate in the gifts, and she designed the chip carvings and final details after I had the finials and all carved and smoothed. They were colored with artists' tube oil paints which I let set for a day, then wiped off (like really slow paste wax), then coated with salad bowl finish - apparently a fast, drying non-toxic oil varnish.
spoons.jpgspoons detail.jpg

Please feel free to comment or ask questions about the horse or spoon-making

Karl