Cherry Tree

Last week I discovered a decent size Cherry tree out back while looking for something to chop with my new axe (more on this later).  I came upon the top of the tree, which was knocked down in the October snow storm some months ago.  When I realized what I had found, I went and fetched the chainsaw.  I cut the tree trunk down, and cut the smaller diameter branches and trunk sections (many of which were twisty and bent-good for ladles).   I cut off a section of the base of the tree and split it into planks radially.  Most of them came out fairly twisted, but the few that were quite straight I planed down one face, leaving the back axed or scrub planed roughly. 

The planks that were more twisted became axe handles.  I have a couple of nice vintage handles that are superbly elegant and feel great, but the wood in the eye was in bad shape, so they had to come out of the heads they came with.   I saved them for patterns, they've become my goal for axe handles.  Below you can see three of the four I've made up so far, I already hung one in a head.  I've tucked these away to dry out, it's good to have handles ready for when one breaks or if I get a new head.

I've made a few spoons from the Cherry so far.  It's definitely harder than Birch, I would say it's roughly as hard as the Maple I use sometimes.  This spoon I'm particularly pleased with, I feel that it's very successful in terms of visual balance and form, as well as feeling fairly elegant.

I didn't get any pictures of the rough work, cutting and splitting, but it's not too exciting to look at.  I will make sure I get some pictures of new axe though.  I'm very excited about it.  A week and a half ago I traded for a racing axe (one of the inexpensive made in China ones), and have been really pleased with it so far.  I forget at the moment, but I believe it's a 6 pound head, with a very aggressive grind.  It practically chops by itself!  It seems to prefer a slightly different technique than my other big choppers, the 3.5 Snow and Neally and the others.  Or maybe the heavier head is just forcing me to use better form...
 

Frame and Panel (and spoons)

 Here's a photo of a frame and panel that I've been working on the last couple of days.  The frame is Cherry with the panel in Curly Maple with bug stains.  The Maple came from the pallet stack at the lumber yard about a year ago, I don't know whether I posted much if anything about it then.  It's been sitting in my basement since, and is dry enough to use now.  I chopped the 1/4" mortises with my Narex mortise chisel and used my Ryoba to cut the tenons, and I got quite a bit of use out of my Veritas plow plane for the grooves and rebates that allow the panel to sit flush with the top of the frame.  For the cross grain rebates, I scored deeply with my marking gauge (pin filed into a knife edge) and ran the first dozen passes carefully to preserve the visible edge.  This worked out fine, and saved me have to make or buy a rebate plane.  The Veritas only works for rebates up to about 3/8" wide (the widest blade), but that was fine for this application.  For a wider rebate, you could simply plow a groove and then use a bench plane to remove the relish. 

On the panel is a collection of spoons I've been accumulating the last couple of weeks, most in Black Birch.  I've been building up a collection to bring to a couple of stores, and after reviewing the terms on Etsy again, I'm considering selling some there as well.  This was my first time using Black Birch for anything but walking sticks as a kid, and it's interesting to work.  It's harder than the Paper Birch I'm also using, and the grain is a little more distinct.  Most of these spoons are made from vertical grain wood, split radially from a small log.  A couple are made from bent or straight branches.  I found one branch that worked nicely so that I ended up with some curly grain in the bowl.  Overall I'm pleased with where the spoons are going.  They're getting closer to the spoons I've been trying to create from the start.  A new hook or two would help me get the inside of the bowl right, I still only have the small radius Mora hook.  I'm talking to a blacksmith friend of mine about a couple of ideas.

Here's a picture of me with the panel, to get a feel for the size of it.  It's about 18x18", not including the untrimmed ends.  I'm thinking this would make a nice little tabletop.  Some finish will help the grain really show up, and I'll probably let it sit in the sun to darken the Cherry up a bit.

Mahogony Square

A couple weeks ago I was at the lumber yard picking up materials for work when I spotted an unusual piece of wood in the box of bunker wood (the junk wood used to keep good lumber off the ground).  My suspicions were confirmed when I picked it up and looked closer: a 3x4 of Mahogony (I can't tell which sort)!  I could see it was glued up of two pieces, but still respectable pieces.  I have been curious to see how it works, since I've heard that it's a good handtool wood.  The piece I have is quite light, maybe lighter than a similar piece of White Pine, and the grain is pretty distinct.

I first ripped it down the glue line, leaving me with roughly a 2x3.  A  square seemed like a good simple project to get a feel for the wood.  I ripped off a vertical grain piece for the blade, and used the original rip for the stock.  I sawed out the sides of the bridle joint, then chiseled the waste.  This wood is pretty soft and easy to saw, but the end grain also crushes fairly easily with chiseling and even planing.  It's hard to get a good polished finish on the end grain with a plane like I'm used to with the other woods I've worked.

I did a better job of laying this one out than my old one, so it was really square right away, without any fiddling.  I ran out of time so I didn't glue it, that will come later.  The proportions look funny to my eye, but as long as it works I don't really care.

I also bought an inexpensive micrometer a while ago, and I have been measuring some of my plane shavings.  I can get my block plane to take a shaving as thin as .001 (one thousandth of an inch) but no thinner.  I haven't seen the thinnest I can make with my #8 yet, but I bet I can match the block plane.

Birch Find

For those not near me geographically, I'll note that we had an apocalyptic snow storm Halloween weekend here in CT that resulted in a lot of trees coming down.  In the last three weeks I've seen plenty of people loading up wood laying on the side of the road for firewood, most of it is free for the taking.  The other day I was driving around and noticed some Birch on the side of a small back road, but I didn't have time to stop and collect it.  Today on my way home I did have time, so I quickly sectioned the larger branch pieces into three foot lengths with my folding saw, and found one larger log piece hiding in there too.  The rest of the larger pieces were taken for firewood, I assume.  If I get to use all of this before it gets too dry, it'll make a lot of spoons!

Garland Mill Video

This is a video I took at the Garland Mill at the TFG NE Gathering a couple weeks ago.

The Beginning

Yesterday after work I emptied out my car and started to pack by piling all my tools on the ground around the trunk.  It was at this point that I realized I was in trouble.  Luckily I got nearly all of it in without too much difficulty, and even had room for some camping gear and a bag of clothes.  I left behind one toolbox and a few miscellaneous tools that I don't anticipate needing.

This morning I took my time getting up, loading the last couple of things, and hitting the road shortly before 11.  After a largely uneventful drive, I arrived at Wason Pond in Chester, NH at about 2.  I met a couple of the other early birds (official arrival day is tomorrow), and I'm now at McDonalds a few miles down the road enjoying a cold drink and some internet.  Today was hot.  I think I'll be taking another dip in the pond when I get back.

Here are a couple shots of the site and the lumber.  In the second photo, the concrete you can see toward the end of the wood stacks are the two sides of the span for the bridge, about 18 or 20 feet by eye.  Tomorrow is going to be setup day and I need to sharpen a few things I ran out of time for this past week.

Salvaging Wood and New Saw

  

A house that I've been working on got a new boiler, which came in a nice simple crate made of White Oak, Cherry, and maybe some Maple.  I spent a few minutes at the end of the day pulling it apart and saving the nicer pieces.  The slats are 1/4"-1/2" thick, maybe 3" or 4" wide, with some other assorted size pieces.  I guess I can use the thin stuff for some cute little boxes or some other little project. 

Yesterday I whipped up a quick handle for that sawblade I mentioned in my last post.  I used some riven Maple from the back yard, axed and knifed to shape, cut a kerf in it, and secured the blade with a bolt and a small screw lower down to keep the blade from rotating around the bolt in use.  It's not pretty but it will do the job.  I'm pleased with the blade so far, a bit thicker and seems like much better quality than my old cheap Sharksaw (my first handsaw from a few years ago).  Now that I have my nice one, I can relegate my Sharksaw to construction work, not that I ever use it for nice cuts anymore.

Working on Wide Boards

The way I cut my boards to final length may be unusual, or it may be very common.  I really don't know because I don't remember ever reading about how anyone else does it (though I haven't read very many of the classic woodworking texts).  Anyways, this is how I go about it:

I typically rough cut an inch or two oversize, depending on how my material works out and whatever other factors are in play.  Then (if not already done) I will joint one edge and shoot one end of the board off of that.  I pull my measure from the shot end, mark for square and saw about 1/16" over.  This allows for a little slop in case my saw has had a few too many to drink.  I then shoot to a hair shy of my line, being sure to reference off of the same edge.  This makes sure that my two ends are parallel, and square to the face edge.  Once I have all the pieces that are to match through this process, I carefully line them up to see how they compare.  I adjust their length with a few more passes of the plane until they match perfectly.

In the photo above you can see that the 14" wide panel for the bottom of the DVD cabinet I'm building takes up just about my whole shooting board.  Luckily I didn't have to make a new shooting board for this project, but if it were any larger I would have.  With longer planks like this, you can see that I have a couple of boards propped under the end to keep the board flat on my shooting board.  This takes a lot of strain out of the left hand, and lets me focus on shooting.

Below, you can see the trouble in flattening and smoothing a 14" wide panel on an 11" wide bench.  Luckily it's not that much overhang, so it's manageable.  I opened up my vise some to provide support, and used my Veritas Wonder Dog to secure the panel against my planing stop.  This allowed me to use my #5 Jack diagonally across the grain to bring down the hump, and then I had no problem using my block plane to smooth things up.

Where I did run into trouble was on the other side of this panel, where I had to plane out a dish.  I ended up getting rid of the Wonder Dog, and planing straight on each edge of the panel into the stop.  I simply shifted the board back and forth to support wherever I was planing.

If I were working something much wider (but still not wide enough to reach across to the back of my tool well), I could clamp a 2x4, 4x4, or whatever else would be necessary into my leg vise, and if needed secure it against the other leg with a holdfast or bar clamp, depending on the thickness of the piece.  This would effectively  give my a wider solid benchtop to work on.  I think for my next bench I might for a wider bench top, but I'm not sure yet.  I suppose it will mostly depend on what I end up doing more of when it's time for a new bench.  In an ideal world I could have a couple of benches, like Tom Fidgen, one like this, and then one with a really wide solid top for working panels and for assembly.  In an ideal world I would also win the lottery...I suppose I should stop complaining.  Haha!

I also decided that smoothing this big panel would be a good job for a cardscraper, so I made a couple real quick from a dull impulse hardened Japanese saw blade I had laying around.  I cut the blade into two pieces, ground most of the teeth off, more-or-less jointed the edge, ground a roughly 45 degree bevel on one side, polished the flat side on my sandpaper setup to 1200 grit, polished the bevel to the same (bringing it closer-to-but-still-not-quite-90 degrees), and put them to work.  They worked pretty well, but I still feel like the finish isn't quite as gleaming as I get off a sharp plane.  I need to make myself a nice comfortable wood bodied smoother.  This block plane is simply difficult to hang on to.

Once I had the parts for the primary carcass cut, I stood them up to get an idea for how the thing would look.  It should be pretty nice when it's all said and done.  The boards are all three feet long, to give you some scale.  This nice thing about having a low ceiling is that I can brace the thing together by applying a spreading clamp against the ceiling joist (difficult to see in the photo).  So I think that brings the tally to one benefit of low ceilings, five thousand reasons to still hate them.

Using Biscuits Without a Biscuit Joiner

As I was preparing to glue the two boards together for the bottom of the DVD shelf, I got a little nervous about such a wide board with only glue to hold it together in the middle (even though I know the glue joint is usually stronger than the wood itself, bla bla bla), so I decided to reinforce it with some biscuits.  I considered making some biscuits (or would they be splines if I made them myself?), but decided I wanted the expansion properties of commercial biscuits.  I bought a bag at Ace, measured the thickness, and chose a 3/16 slot would be close enough to the standard 4mm of a biscuit cutter.  After jointing up the two mating edges (with the boards clamped together in my vise), I set my plow to cut a groove down the center of the boards, and referenced off of the face edges to make sure everything was consistent.  I made sure to stay a couple inches in from the finished length of the board.

Because I wasn't cutting all the way from end to end of the board, my plane cut an arc-like groove, and couldn't reach the full depth even in the center of the groove.  I took my 3/16 mortise chisel and deepened the groove appropriately, checking to be sure my biscuits would sit approximately halfway in the groove.  

After a test fit, I loosely filled the groove with a handful of biscuits and plenty of glue, and clamped up with the two clamps I have that are long enough.  Hope it's enough!  I'm not really too worried.  Once the glue is set overnight, I'll crosscut, shoot, and start laying out for dovetails.

If I used biscuits more often (and I might, now that I have some), it might be worth investing in a biscuit joiner.  It would make this whole process (which took probably 15 or 20 minutes) a 60 second procedure, after plugging in.  As it is, though, for the occasional use this method works well enough, and it means one less tool to buy, store, and maintain.  Also, I like to avoid the noise and dust of power tools when I can, in my small shop.

Getting Going

Woohoo!  Yesterday my friend and I drove up to Renwood Lumber in Southwick Mass.  We picked up about 35 board feet of mostly Curly Maple, and one big board of plain Soft Maple.  This will go into the DVD cabinet that my friend commissioned.  I am working on finding a way to resaw the 6/4 stock into 3/4 boards.  I got a steal of a deal on the wood (about $2 per board foot) because I picked my boards out of the pallet stock.  Mostly 8 inch wide boards, with a couple of 4 inch wide boards.  Right now I have it stickered in the basement, waiting for me to start hacking it up.

Glued Up Benchtop

Last night I glued up the two 6x6" posts for the top.  First I jointed the two mating faces, they weren't too bad but needed a little straightening and squaring.  I wetted the mating faces and slathered on plenty of Gorilla Glue, then clamped up with my four clamps.  Then I flipped it up on edge, and drilled three pilot holes from the back for 10" Timerlock bolts, then drove the bolts in.  I was just gifted an awesome new Makita impact driver, so I used that to drive the bolts so I could try it out, but I've used my brace plenty of times before, so I know it works fine (and applies so much torque that I could drive these things all the way through the wood).  I put them 4" in from each edge and one in the center.  I'll just have to keep them in mind when I'm drilling my dog holes.  I also was unable to remove two giant nails from one of the posts that are indicators of their previous life as a retainer wall, so I'll have to watch out for those.

While the glue was setting up, I marked and cut the legs to length.  Next step is cutting the joints.  After watching the episode of The Woodwright's Shop where Roy talks about the rising dovetail a few times, as well as a video on youtube where a different person goes through the joint, I am starting to feel confident enough to tackle them.  I will admit that I am not looking forward to dealing with the angled mortise and tenons on the back legs.  I also find myself wishing for a 6" deep backsaw to cut the joints accurately.  Roy's top is only 3" or 4" thick, but he still cut the leg joints with a handsaw.  I may go this route.

Goings On

Today one of the guys I work for sent me home with this pile of Yellow Pine flooring left over from a job.  After I plane the backs of the boards smooth they will probably be a heavy 1/2" or 5/8" thick.  Some of these will be 11" wide after I take off the tongue and groove.  Some are as narrow as 6", which is still plenty wide.

I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, or where I'm going to keep it.  My tiny basement room is already plenty crowded, and a couple of these pieces are still 16 feet long, which wouldn't fit down there even if I could get them down the stairs and around the corner in the first place.  I might make a bookshelf or something, but I don't really need any furniture right now.


Below you can see a couple of new things.  In the middle is my new bowsaw.  I have been frustrated with my coping saw for a while now, and instead of spending $15 on a new one that probably wouldn't be much better, I decided to go ahead and get the Gramercy Tools bowsaw kit, which consists of the two brass pins and one of each of the three blades.  For $25 and three hours of work, I have a good small bowsaw that is miles ahead of  my crappy coping saw, even though I haven't added handles yet.  I made it from Oak, and left the frame a little hefty, so it's not quite as elegant as the Gramercy frame, but I don't have to worry about snapping the frame by over-tightening it.  I also left the frame quite rough, not even taking off all of the original finish from the Oak's previous life as a cabinet door.


At the front left corner you can see a crochet of sorts (one word that I have seen these called, and the only one that is coming to mind right now).  So far the only use it's been is a resting place for my brace.  Normally used to secure the end of a board for edge planing, with a dog in a hole on the front bench to support the board.  The rear end is supported by a dog or a clamp in my case.  It works okay, but I can't say I'm overwhelmed.  Peter Follansbee seems to like these, but he has a screw through his.  I might try that.  I've also seen one of these used to support a board for dovetailing on a portable bench, but the wood kept shifting on me.  Maybe the angle on mine is too open and doesn't pinch the wood enough.  

Dimensioning Some Stock

I just ordered a frame saw blade with rip filed teeth from highlandwoodworking.com, so I figured I could start preparing the frame pieces for when it gets here. I took a decent sized plainsawn Maple plank from the backyard, split it down the middle to make two quartersawn pieces, and roughly hewed the edges straight.

Following that, I clamped the pieces to my bench and hit the edges with the scrub plane first, then my #5. The blade in the #5 is in need of a sharpening, the surface it's leaving behind is beginning to resemble that left by a toothed blade. Fine for my framesaw, but I prefer a smooth finish on most of my pieces. I might also take the opportunity to reduce the camber in the blade now that I have a dedicated scrub plane.


After that, I went ahead and re-scrubbed the faces and then evened them out with the #5.


I discovered a little bit of flame in these boards. Subtle, but pleasant to look at.


Unfortunately, after I did all this work I pulled out a tape measure and did some arithmetic, and I'm pretty sure these are too short to work for the stretchers of the frame based on the length of the blade. I'll have to hunt up some other decent wood. I suppose I could even use pine, since these pieces will be under compression, and that would lighten things up a bit besides. I might raid the pallet stack at the auto body shop down the street.

Happy New Year!

This morning (actually this afternoon) when I woke up I finished up my new saw bench that I started yesterday before joining my friends to celebrate the holiday. The top is a chunk of Maple that I cut out of the back yard, barely flattened and thicknessed (as is evident by the 1/2" variation in thickness across the length of the board), and planed a bevel on the long edges to give the legs a bit of splay. The legs are rough sawn Hemlock scraps from work, which I brought home along with some 1x ship lap Pine and a couple Yellow Pine floor boards the other day (photo below). The stretchers are some of that ship lap Pine. I screwed it all together, and did a pretty rough job of the whole thing. I wasn't interested in making a nice piece of furniture, just something that would make sawing a bit easier. For my imaginary future shop I'm planning on a nicer one, maybe with some real joints, but this will do for now.


I decided to use some of the ship lap Pine to make a shooting board so that I could finally easily square my crosscuts. First step is to plane the joint edges of the boards together. I learned this trick on some other blog (Correction: I was reading back through Roy Underhill's The Woodwright's Guide and realized I saw it in there), but it's such a good trick it's worth repeating in one more place. By planing the edges together, any out-of-squareness will be transferred equally, so the boards will still go together perfectly flat. In fact, to get a bit more face grain for glue up, it might be a good idea to put a pretty good angle on there.

My first experiment rubbing boards together for glue up. You just apply glue and rub the boards back and forth a few times. As long as you did a good job planing, the edges will suction together just like two wet plates of glass. In the picture I have the board perched on the Veritas Wonder Dog because I'm too afraid to set it down against a wall, for fear of the joint coming out of line. I just used regular Elmer's white glue because that's what I have right now, and I don't expect to be getting my shooting board wet.

The fence for the shooting board is next to the glued up panel. It's a rip off of one of the Yellow Pine boards, planed square.

Happy Holidays!

Above is an interesting plane that is on the mantel at my grandparent's house, and I've been paying closer and closer attention to it over the last few years as I've been getting deeper into woodworking. This Christmas while we were there, I pulled it apart and took some detail photographs. One interesting detail of the construction that I noticed this time around is the dovetailed piece that forms the front of the mouth. The curved sole leads me to believe that this is probably for the inside of barrels or some other concave surface. The rather small mouth opening indicates that it is for taking fine shavings. Because of the age of the wood, it's difficult to determine what species the plane is made from, but I think the mouth could be oak or ash. The main body almost seems like some sort of soft wood based on the grain. I have some pictures of the interior of the mouth/blade holding area as well as the maker's mark that I might post up later. It's pretty typical, but I still find it interesting.

Below are some holiday spoons for friends and family with a 6" rule. All Paper Birch from the same tree. I used a pattern for the two smaller spoons, based on Barn the spoon's suggestions, made from a piece of flexible plastic. First I axed and then smoothed with my knife a crank into a half stick, traced the pattern, axed to the pattern, and then carved it all out from there. The final step in roughing these is to hollow the bowl. It's very quick work with the green Birch, but it's a bit soft and flexible for these small eating spoons, much better for the larger utensils that can be left thicker.
Tips for Spooners-Barn the Spoon


Below is some quarter sawn Maple from a stump in the backyard. These are about 5-6" wide, and about 4-6/4 thick. Plenty hefty! I very approximately flattened and thicknessed these boards with my new Lee Valley scrub, and couldn't resist finishing one out to see what the grain would look like.

The radial flecks are a little more subtle than something like Oak, but I think it's very pleasant to look at.

It's amazing how stable quartersawn lumber is! I know that's the whole idea, but it's still really cool to me. I took these straight out of the back yard and moved them down to the basement mere feet from the furnace for over a week, and haven't seen a single check or any suggestion of twist or cupping. I did paint the ends as a precaution, but I've also been storing them upright. I found a webpage somewhere (one of the few I didn't bookmark...yarg!) that suggested storing lumber on end instead of horizontally prevented almost all checking. I haven't done enough experimenting to verify that, but it sure hasn't hurt!

A Few New Things

Last week I finished a new work bench, made from pressure treated 6x6s. I had them laying around, so I used them. This bench is super massive. The top felt it weighed 80-100 pounds alone.

I don't have any vises, but I installed a plane stop and I bought a couple clamps that can traverse the width of the top with room to spare. This allows me to hold wood adequately in the three major planes of orientation. In the photo I have a piece of scrap pine clamped for edge planing while I was tuning my planes.

The difficulty I'm having is clamping a piece flat to the top of the bench, such as when I want to chisel a mortise into the face of a piece. The trouble is that my clamps are too long to orient the excess bar below the bench, and orienting the excess bar above the bench puts them right in the way of my mallet. I drilled dog holes that will accept traditional holdfasts, but haven't decided whether I actually want to shell out for a pair or deal with what I have.

After I finished assembling my bench in my basement room, I started getting my planes in shape. I have had these for quite some time, but without an effective way to hold my work, they were almost useless (except for trimming a door once). With the bench, though, they become very useful. I got a piece of glass, some spray adhesive, and a bunch of cheap sandpaper in 100 and 220. I also picked up some 400, 600, and 1200 wet/dry. I polished the soles, lapped the blades, sharpened them up.

The knob on my Bailey #5 is broken, and the screw is bent, so I need to make a replacement and try to find a suitable screw. I haven't got around to it yet, but I have been using it without any problem. I put a slight camber on the blade, and I have it set heavy to try to take the place of a scrub plane. Using it is a bit of a workout, but it does the job. I have one of my block planes set as a heavy smoother, and the other block plane set as a fine smoother. I polished rubbed some paste wax onto all the polished metal to try to reduce rusting caused by my grimy mitts.




With these three planes I can take a rough hewn board down to a glassy smooth, square board.


Leevalley is running a great deal on some mortise chisels. Only through the 15th, so if you want some, get on it quick. I lightly flattened the backs, polished up the bevels, and they cut great.


I felt a hankering for a couple of longer knives, so I ordered a Mora #2 and a Lauri 4.8" blade from Ben's Backwoods. I love the Mora #1 blade shape and length, but the handle is too small to be comfortable for heavy cutting. The #2 has a nice big handle.

Spoons

Today I didn't have any work, which is a good thing because I've been feeling terrible and running a low grade fever most of the day, on top of getting very little useful sleep because I was focusing on avoiding throwing up.

So I started collecting parts for a bike trailer I'm going to build, based on the plans here:
http://www.carryfreedom.com/bamboo.html

So far I have the metal sheet for the brackets mostly cut, still need to drill holes, make a couple more cuts, and bend them to shape.
Two cracked bicycle wheels that I got for free at the bike shop.

I'm not decided yet on what I'm going to use for the frame, but probably maple sticks from the yard.

I also pulled myself together today and carved some spoons. I started out with the small Maple log you see here:

I split it out into four useful blanks, then cut two of them in half for eating spoons. The other two were meant for serving spoons. One of the blanks had a catastrophic crack in it that I didn't see until I was mostly done rough shaping it with the axe, so that went into the fire pile. The first step in shaping is done with the axe, and a saw to trim off the edges of the blank close to my pencil marks (which are drawn freehanded in whatever shape appeals to me).

After roughing with the axe, I carve out the bowls with my hook knife.

After that, I attack them with the regular knife. This is the stage in which everything is refined and the block of wood actually starts to resemble a proper utensil. I leave everything a bit thick at this point, so that once the wood dries out I can shave it down to finished dimensions.

Here are the tools I used, except the saw which was used for four cuts. Gransfors Bruks Swedish Carving Axe, Mora 510 (with a bit of a regrind to saber convex bevel), and a Mora small radius hook knife. This is about $210 worth of tools, but $180 of that is in the axe. For a much more reasonable tool kit, you can replace the axe with almost any axe. Below you can see two $15-20 axe heads rehandled with the same pattern handle as the carving axe (Cold Steel Norse Hawk, and a modern Collins hatchet). For even less, you can get great old hatchets for $5 and grind a fresh edge on them, slap a new handle on, and you are good to go. That would bring a basic spoon carving kit to about $50 or less, brand new!

The fin on the back is something new for me that I've been trying to figure out for a while (I'm embarrassed to say, now that I've figured it out). Deceptively simple to apply, and it adds quite a lot of strength to the spoon in the weakest part. You might also notice the grain of the spoons. I was careful to align the rings in the spoons so that the spoons would be strongest in the direction that force is applied, similar to aligning the grain of an axe handle.

The curve of the spoon, with the bowl canted in relation to the handle, makes the spoon tremendously easier to eat out of compared to a straight spoon.

Total time so far on these spoons is a bit under 4 hours, which includes 10-15 minutes sharpening my axe. That works out to 45-50 minutes per spoon so far. I'll probably spend another 20-60 minutes on each spoon to finish them out, so if I round up, each spoon will take about 2 hours of work by the end.