Learning axe & knife skills for spoon carving

I spent the weekend at RHS Garden Harlow Carr in Yorkshire teaching a spoon carving course to six lovely folk.
My courses always focus on teaching carving skills and we build these up at the same time as making wooden spoons. Everyone goes home with spoons to show off and use but, more importantly they learn techniques and confidence to continue using carving axes and carving knives after the course.
We start by splitting a log and then axing out a spoon shape. I’m always impressed by how quickly people improve in their confidence and accuracy with the axes. Safety is key, brilliant demonstrations of safe hand positions here.

Then we start to carve using the straight and hooked knives. I want spoon carving to be an accessible hobby so I select the best tools to reflect this which work well and are within people’s budget. We work through different knife grips, all the time refining the spoon as we go. Check out that beautiful long shaving that Alison is making as she carves long, clean facets on the handle, easy to do with good technique.

This was a two day course which means we can look more deeply at the skills and work on more carving complicated eating spoons as well. Here are Callum‘s spoons, great shapes and finish.

If you’d like to learn to carve wooden spoons, check out my other course dates. I am planning some workshops in Manchester for 2017, subscribe to my newsletter to be first to hear about dates.