Sunday, May 25, 2008

Poplar Spoon

While up north last weekend, I took some time one evening to carve out a spoon from some left-over wood stock. The blank had been cut last time I was at The Carpenter's Square workshop so this really wasn't a pure bushcraft spoon hewn out of a log with an axe. I ended up working on the poplar blank (3rd from the bottom) in the following pic.


Spoon blanks and quarter-scale paddle blanks

Anyway, I started on a simple shape with a deep bowl and made good progress carving away with my Mora knife and Frosts spoon knife. It was near sunset so I never took photos of the carving process, but once back in the city and after a thorough sanding, I was left with a decent spoon. With some minor pyrography along the rim and a coating of coconut oil, this one's good to go on the next paddling trip. I've found spoon carving a fun way to use some of the smaller scrap pieces left over from paddle-making.


Sanded & Decorated


Oiled Up



2 comments:

Mungo said...

Nicely done - I'd never thought of using coconut oil before.

Cheers,

Mungo

Murat said...

I chose Coconut oil because the high saturated fat content makes it safer to use for high heat cooking - my wife's original intended use for the spoon. Most other food safe vegetable oils (like walnut, almond, flax etc) tend to oxidize heavily upon exposure to heat and air and form unhealthy byproducts. These oils have always been meant to be consumed cold. The catch is that coconut oil solidifies and gets waxy below 20 degrees or so, which means it is of limited use in cooler temperatures outdoors...at least in our climate zone anyway.

Regards,
Murat

P.S. Never got to mention how much I enjoy your blog - the post on charcloth was particular informative. Thanks Mungo!

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