FeatherSticks · Skills
How to Carve a Spoon: Spoon Carving for Beginners, Step by Step
A green branch, a knife and one afternoon: that is your first spoon.
Quick facts
- Time
- 3–6 h carving, 1–2 weeks drying
- Difficulty
- Medium: easy cuts, but many of them
- Best for
- A first real carving project, camp and kitchen use
- You need
- Green wood, straight knife, hook knife, saw, first aid kit
What you need
- Straight carving knife (sloyd or bushcraft knife, Scandi grind)
- Hook knife for your dominant hand
- Folding saw
- Small axe or hatchet and a wooden baton (optional)
- Strop with polishing compound
- Pencil, tape or thumb guard, cut-resistant glove
- Paper bag and food-safe oil
- First aid kit
Step by step
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1 Get fresh green wood
Saw a straight, knot-free section of green birch, alder, lime, cherry or sycamore, 25–30 cm long and 7–12 cm thick. Use windfall or prunings, and only with the owner's permission.
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2 Split it and draw the spoon
Split the log through the pith and shave the pith away. Draw the side profile with its crank first, then the outline on the flat face, both along the grain.
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3 Saw stop cuts, rough out
Saw stop cuts at the neck down to the pencil line. Then remove the waste beside the handle and around the bowl; it breaks off cleanly at the cuts.
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4 Shape handle and back
Carve the handle and the rounded back of the bowl with long, controlled cuts away from you. Always cut from wide to narrow, so the knife never dives into the grain.
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5 Hollow the bowl
Mark the rim, then scoop the bowl with the hook knife across the grain, from the rim towards the centre. Take thin shavings and stop at an even wall of 4–5 mm.
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6 Dry slowly, finish and oil
Let the spoon dry in a paper bag for one to two weeks, away from heat. Take a last pass of fine knife cuts, then rub in a thin coat of food-safe oil.
Common mistakes
- Using dry, knotty or unidentified wood instead of fresh green birch, alder, lime, cherry or sycamore.
- Leaving the pith in the blank — the most common cause of cracks.
- Drawing only the top outline and forgetting the crank in the side view.
- Hollowing the bowl before the outside is shaped, so the blank is fragile and hard to hold.
- Cutting against the grain at the neck and out of the bowl towards the rim, which tears the wood.
- Working with a dull hook knife and forcing thick shavings, with the thumb in the path of the blade.
- Drying the spoon beside a stove, heater or campfire to "speed it up".