Tips for Spooners

Recently i've done a few orders of spoons, which is something i rarely do as i normally just make what i like and then street sell them. i have spent a huge amount of time trying out different spoon designs but i am now keen to get more into production work. The wood i now reside in and will do for the winter at least has much over stood hazel coppice and i have started making spoons out of it, i have found it to be a very good wood for spoons and the one i currently use to eat is Hazel it's in a Wille Sundquist style (Swedish spoon guru). i have tried most native woods and consider hazel as good as any for spoons. Anyway for the production spoons i made some templates so as to speed up the process and the top tip is to use the 2 litre plastic milk bottles for templates, these are obviously readily available can be cut up with scissors and will live much longer than cardboard ones, the bonus is that like cardboard they flex, i saw up the hazel into 7 " blanks  about 5 mm oversize then axe a crank into it making sure to leave the top surface clean and all but finished i then put the template on the top and draw round the profile, cutting into the neck of the spoon accuratley is the biggest time saver when carving spoons, also getting the top surface perfect before moving onto knife is important. i shall post some photos of the templates and the spoons directly.