The Driftless Folk School recently announced they would be holding some classes this year. I noticed they will also be hosting their 8th Annual Spoon Gathering. The spoon gathering is a weekend of greenwood spoon carvers getting together to practice their craft and teach others. As author Steve Schuler, borrowing a bit from Michelangelo, wrote, "Making a spoon is easy. Start with a piece of wood and remove everything that doesn't look like a spoon".
As luck would have it, I have several thousand pounds of fresh green wood lying in our front yard. I thought it would be nice to make something as a reminder of our poor white oak tree. Taking inspiration from the spoon gathering, I plan to try and carve a spoon from some of the wood.
I told Maggie my plan to make a spoon, as I hauled my small band saw from the basement to set up outside. She felt it should be carved entirely by hand. Undeterred, and knowing that there will be a lot of hand carving involved, I walked out to the pile of oak logs and picked out a good candidate. Unfortunately, my band saw had a throat of about 4-1/2 inches, which was much smaller than my log. I got a splitting maul and hatchet from the garage, and split the log into a billet, employing some handwork after all. I sketched a rough shape on the billet and made some cuts on the band saw.
There is still plenty left to carve away by hand. It is a different style of woodworking than I am accustomed to, and needs different tools. I will need a gouge to form the hollow of the spoon, and a spokeshave to carve the curves. I have a drawknife that I may also be able to use. I will also need sharpening stones that fit the curved tools. Maybe I should make two spoons to help offset the cost.
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