Viking Spoon

This is my first wood carving project. I have never attempted to whittle before so I hope you like.

Step 1: Viking Spoon. Tools

I used a variety of tools to make my spoon. I have been totally inspired by morfmir with all his traditional viking methods of making stuff however im not that skilled at wheeling an axe as im just a meager Anglo Saxon. So i went into my work shop and used the tools i have to hand.

Step 2: Viking Spoon Marking Out

The first thing I did was to choose the type of wood I was going to use. I have previously made a wooden spoon using a wood lathe and the timber I used was from a recycled pallet. This was a soft wood and really easy to turn. However when the wood gets wet it swells and had a ruff texture to it.

I chose a piece of Iroko. I had some left over from my last instructable  Lund stool that i made. This is a very hard wood and has a terrible smell when you cut it on the band saw, so make sure you wear a dust mask!! 

I noticed when turning the legs on the lund stool that it was blunting my chisels so I knew that this was going to be a challenging job to hand whittle.

I cut a rectangular piece of Iroko 300mmx60mmx60mm and marked out the shape of my spoon on the the face and and on the side.

Step 3: Viking Spoon. Cutting Into Shape.

I started to cut the shape of my spoon on a band saw, however this started to really smoke and i was terrified that the fire alarms were going to go off and i don't think i would be in the head teacher good books if 600 kids were congrogated on the school playground because of me. So i secured the wood in a bench vice and used a trusty coping saw.

This was hard work but i managed to cut the whole thing without snapping a blade.

The way i cut this was doing it in stages. I cut the shape of the spoon head first from the top view i marked out and then cut the top of the spoon on the side view.

I kept doing this so that it all fell apart like a jigsaw.

Step 4: Viking Spoon. Whittling Into Shape.

One the spoon was cut into shape i wanted to give my spoon a realistic medievil look. so i got my stanley knife and whittled the shaft of the spoon into shape. I used the blade to give it a notched look. I was trying to make it look like i had cut this piece of wood with an axe rather than a coping saw. It is definetly very rustic looking but im pleased with it.

Step 5: Viking Spoon. Carving Out the Spoon Head.

First of all I marked out the shape of the spoon head and then used my stanley knife to form a deep cut into the pencil line. This gave me a base for me to strat gouging out the bowl effect. I used some proper carving chisels for this that i found in one of my draws. I used a grinding wheel to sharpen these chisels as they were very blunt from the previous owner.

It was very satisfying seeing the spoon take shape.

when i was happy witht the depth I then used an 80 grit sand paper to smooth out the bowl and to finish it off used some wet and dry paper to give it a nice shiney smooth finish.

Step 6: Viking Spoon. Carving the Head.

I have never done any whittling or carving before and am really pleased with the end result. considering I am not a natural artist i think i did fairly well here with this.?

Step 7: Viking Spoon Carving

I really enjoyed carving the vikings head so I decided to carve something onto the back of the spoon aswell . I looked on google images for some inspiration and came across a celtic Trinity symbol I know I strayed a bit away from the viking theme but it looks good and as im half welsh i thought a celtic theme would also be good.

 The trick with this was to not carve to deep or I would end up coming through the other side of the spoon. so I was very mindfull of this and kept checking the sound and how hollow sounding it was and pinching it between my fingers to give me a rough
"guess-tamation"!

Step 8: Viking Spoon Finishing.

When I had finished all the whittling i ran some sand paper over all the rough parts of the spoon and gave it a smooth finish making sure not to take any of the rustic look out of it.

To finish it off I then used some linseed oil to give it a darker shinier look.

After i finished this i had a debate with the class over traditional methods of carving and modern techniques of using routers and lazer cutters. And if we  had either of these tools we would surely like to find out to see if it was doable!!

Hope you all enjoyed. and please leave some comments.