Spoon Carving Question

[Bruce Ferm]

I’ve read everything I can find about what are the preferred woods to use when carving functional wooden spoons for kitchen use. Most of what I found was about what woods may have toxins in them, and one wood that I wasn’t able to find any mention of was Basswood. Is Basswood a good wood for carving functional wooden spoons for kitchen use?

[Joe Pfeifer]

Basswood would be too soft in my opinion. For functional spoons, I'd use a harder wood like cherry, maple, or Apple.

[David Linnabary]

I carved some out of Bradford pear last year that came out pretty good, the tight grain resisted discoloration from foods. But I had to get on it while it was fairly green or it was quite tough to work.

I mention this because you find so many planted along streets in subdivision and they are very hard but brittle and prone to breaking up in wind storms. Bent branches make nice grain patterns for spoons

David

[Brian Myers]

Cherry , maple, apple , black walnut , and birch are all usable .