It’s a question I get a lot when selling my wooden spoons at craft markets, and I was never sure how to answer. I couldn’t remember the last time I timed myself on a spoon from start to finish. And anyway, my workspace being one end of the dining room, I’m frequently interrupted. My standard response has been, “under an hour, if the wood behaves.” But I really wasn’t sure.
So his afternoon, the house was fairly quiet, so I decided to time myself. I found a billet of black walnut, traced my template onto it, and started the stopwatch on my smarphone.
Even though I got interrupted twice (once by my wife and once by my daughter), I managed to go from rough stock to scraped surface in just under 20 minutes. The only thing left to do is raise the grain with some water, let it dry, sand back the grain, and apply a finish. Not counting dry-time, that’s about another 3-4 minutes of work.
I guess that means my stock answer was half right.
That is really an impressive time! I am guessing it took a lot longer when you first started making spoons. Surely your hand and arm strength plus technique have improved over the years which would attribute to being able to make a spoon in about half an hour, start to finish.