Relief & Spoon Carving Kit

It is the spoon carver's defining tool — a curved blade that hollows the bowl of a spoon (a concave cut no straight knife can make). The hook knife and a straight carving knife (for the outside) are the two tools of spoon carving. A green (fresh) wood spoon blank and a hook knife are all you need to carve a spoon.

Carving pushes a sharp blade toward the holding hand — a cut-resistant Kevlar carving glove on the holding hand (and a thumb guard) is the standard safety. The cutting hand is safer (it moves away); the holding hand is the one that gets cut. A carving glove is the cheap insurance that keeps your thumb.

Short, palm-held gouges (vs. mallet-struck) for relief carving — they remove wood in controlled scoops for the contours of a relief scene (a face, a leaf). The palm gouge is pushed by hand pressure (not struck), for the fine, controlled removal that relief demands. A set of sweeps (the curve profiles) is the relief carver's vocabulary.

Always — cutting with the wood's grain direction lets the knife glide; cutting against it tears and splinters. Read the grain (it runs along the wood) and reverse the cut direction when the grain reverses (as on a curve). Carving against the grain is the beginner's frustration; with it, the craft becomes easy.