Carving Spoons: Welsh Love Spoons, Celtic Knots, and Contemporary Favorites

by Shirley Adler

Carving Spoons, Revised Second Edition is your introduction to learn how to carve these hand-crafted objects of utility and sentiment. Spoon carving instructor Shirley Adler will get you started making beautiful spoons to keep for yourself or give away. All you need are a few small scraps of wood and some common carving tools. Shirley provides step-by-step instructions for shaping the bowl and adding detail to the handle. She offers a thorough introduction to carving basics, from selecting tools and materials to making models, transferring patterns, sanding, finishing, and handling mistakes. The featured 45 ready-to-use patterns offer dozens of mix-and-match designs for both beginning and experienced carvers. A colorful photo gallery shows a gorgeous selection of finished spoons, and an introduction to Welsh and Scandinavian spoon carving traditions provides a rich context for this historical craft.

Genres: Woodwork, Nonfiction, Crafts

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Serge Pierro · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the burgeoning renaissance of spoon carving currently taking place, it should come as no surprise that books of recent times are starting to be looked at again, and sometimes in a new light. "Carving Spoons" is one such book. Although it tends to focus on Welsh Love Spoons, there is other information pertinent to regular spoon carving.

The history of Welsh Love Spoons was quite interesting and was perhaps the highlight of the book. The Chapters focused on spoon carving and specifically the Welsh variety.

The Carving your first spoon chapter had some odd recommendations that now seem dated, as today's carver focuses on cutting blanks with an axe and not a band saw. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with using a band saw, it does take a bit away from the whole "by hand" methodology that carvers seem to favor today. There was also the use of drilling a hole in the bowl of the spoon to a predetermined depth as a reference as to how low to carve the inside of the bowl. I had never seen this before, and although it is interesting, I don't think that this would be recommended today.

Published in 2003, the information is solid, with a large variety of top view patterns for those looking for some inspiration. But, 15 years later the techniques and general advice seem a bit dated and not of the level of depth that has become expected in this day in age. Topics such as finishing seem to be far too general and not slanted towards actual spoon usage, but towards displaying the spoons, which makes some sense as the book is focused on the aspects of Welsh Love Spoon carving.

The book has some excellent photos and instruction, but you should consider this as a supplement to other books and not a primary tome. If the subject matter is of interest to you, then this would be a book worth reading, if only for the patterns themselves. If you are more interested in spoon carving in general, then there are better books on the subject.

[Felicity Fields · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm brand-new to woodcarving and still in the "read everything about it" stage. This book had excellent "how to" pictures of the carving process, patterns for several decorative spoons, and a short but interesting intro to the different styles

If one already had some experience carving, this book would be excellent. As a raw beginner, I found the explanations lacking in which took to use or how to do a particular cut.