Category Archives: Carving
A Note of Encouragement to Beginning Carvers
If you’re doing any wood carving these days, you probably belong to one or more Facebook groups for carving. Or you follow some expert carvers on Instagram. Seeing beautiful woodwork every day can be inspiring at first. But eventually it … Continue reading
Can You Carve Spoons from Dry Wood?
Spoons and other “treen” are traditionally carved from green wood, cut fresh from the tree. The obvious advantages are that (1) fresh-cut wood is softer and generally easier to cut than dried wood, and (2) you don’t have to spend … Continue reading
Sloyd Knife Sheaths
I really like my Morakniv sloyd knives, which I use for spoon carving. They take a very good edge, they are reasonably priced, and they are still made in Sweden by people who know what good tool steel is. Recently … Continue reading
Why I Don’t Sign My Spoons
A lot of spoon carvers put their name, initials, or a maker’s mark on each spoon they make. I don’t. Here’s why. First, signing each piece would add time to the production process without adding monetary value. I know that … Continue reading
Want to Carve Spoons? Use a Template
On a spoon-carving forum I read, the question of templates comes up frequently. A lot of spoon carvers say they “just wing it,” or as others put it, “just see what the wood wants to be.” Now, there’s no question … Continue reading
My Love-Hate Relationship with Spoon Carving Templates
I don’t remember exactly when I began to use templates to lay out my wooden spoons and spatulas, but after I had made my first dozen or so wooden spoons, I hit upon a couple of spoon shapes that just … Continue reading
It’s Official: Spoon Making is “In.”
Earlier this year, the Popular Woodworking Magazine blog promoted several of the magazine’s spoon making resources. There is now a Facebook group of spoon makers and greenwood craftspeople that boasts nearly 5,500 members (myself included). And more recently, over at the Lost … Continue reading
A Good Sloyd Knife
After making a few spoons with my current knives (a short Frost knife and one or two chip carving knives), I determined that I needed a longer knife for shaping handles. I searched for Sloyd knives at all my usual, … Continue reading
Leaf Carving
My wife came back from Wooworking in America with a few carving gouges and a lot of enthusiasm. She and I had attended Mary May‘s seminar on carving oak leaf shapes, and we were keen to try out what we … Continue reading
Carving at the ArtWalk
It’s not often I get to take my woodworking to work with me, but not long ago our art department at the university was collaborating with our English department to have a art/poetry/music exhibition. So I brought a few small … Continue reading
The Literary Workshop Blog 