Kentucky Armory Club

Spoon

You will need a piece of wood
You will need a knife of some sort
You will need a candle


The Spoon, This is one of the universal challenges in bush craft, every course or school dose it. Carve yourself a spoon. While there are many available spoons on the market and one could simply just grab a spoon out of a drawer in there house , very few traditional bushcrafters would be caught with anything but a hand carved spoon. It is still one of the survival tasks to complete in the Air Force SERE training. Its often said that you can tell the experience of a bushman by the quality of his spoon, some get down right amazing!

For this challenge you will carve your own spoon and seal it using heat and a candle.

Fist carver your spoon to shape as primitive or refined as your skills and time allow, using only you bushcraft tools, Its difficult to get a deep spoon so be careful and do not put your body at risk of being cut. After you have your spoon finished to the extent you desire you need to heat the spoon by camp fire or for you who cant just go out and make a fire, by oven. While the spoon it hot you need to rub it with an unscented candle to allow the max to seal the wood.






Post pictures of your spoons below.

I'm gonna try this one but I'm gonna cheat a little. Going to start with a 1.5 inch poplar dowel blank. Hey, my forrest comes in processed kiln dried standard lumber.

Looks cool and I am not kidding when I say, where would we city people get a piece of wood suitable to try this with??
Is some type of wood not to use?

This has been an interesting realization for me Nemo, through the comments posted in these I have come to realize that many people don't just have a yard of woods , or the ability to just go out and pick up sticks. Save the wood shavings from this as the next challenge is fire sets and that will require wood shavings. I would encourage most people to make the wood shavings during that challenge but seeing what some of you have to go through to get materials we should probably try to reduce the number of time you need to procure bush related items.


My spoon is pretty large and a rather deep, your spoon only needs to a functional spoon capable of lifting a slam amount of broth to the mouth. use what ever wood you can find from a sliver of firewood, to a chunk of a pallet, to a dead stick that has fallen in your yard, a chunk of a 2x4 , or in nemos case a round dowel rod.

You don't want to use any pressure treated lumber but beyond that I cant think of any deadly wood, the wax seals the wood up as well so the liquid never penetrates in to the spoon. Canteens were for many years made out of leather that was sealed with wax, it works well.

What type of branch did you use to start.....approx diameter and tree type?

I have trees in the yard but not any that need trimming. I have lots of sticks and branches but they are rotten or not usable size. Plus Nemette would get pissed if I start hacking on the trees.

I have some trees in back lot but mostly scrub and the others are crappy Bradford pears that don't even burn right or decoration trees that would not get big enough for this. Not enough big trees to get to without trespassing. Maybe can pick one up on the range property.

I used a chunk of oak from the firewood pile, split it down to about the 3 x 2 x 12 inches and went from there. If you do a search online you can see a huge number of spoons in various forms and size so you really can use nearly any size chuck of wood. The very common way is to get a 2-3 inch stick and split it in half, then use the rounded side as the bottom of the spoon and the flat split side as the top.

A walk in Cherokee Park would yield a chunk of wood im sure or a walk down by the river might get a nice chuck of driftwood.

Ok So NOT wanting to be known as the guy who buys his salsa from New York City, I took a walk to my back 40 and dug this out of the wood pile. I found a decent branch that fell about 3 months ago and it seems to be good so far. It's a nice maple limb with a slight curve. So far I've split it and made it flat. Tomorrow night I'll start layout and rough shaping.

I may have to get in on this. Will be hard to no use the tools I have on hand though lol.

Good one, SoL!

I've made spoons before with my now departed Grandpa. We used hot coals to burn out the hollow and save some whittling time. Any American hard wood should be food safe, as should any local area pines. You'll wanna avoid sap-heavy scrub trees and ornamental bush wood, tho. Cedars, grape vines, kudzu and decorative Japanese imports and such can be poisonous. And stay away from any tri-leaf plants. Most are benign, but the ones that aren't may result in an ER visit.

So, when in doubt, go with oak I know it sounds stupid, but G-paw always said the bottom-line rule is "Acorny alrighty." i.e., if the area under the tree is scattered with acorns, it's a safe wood to work with. And that's kept me from whittling on poison vine-wood many a time as a little kid.

Monday's completely booked thru sundown. I'll tackle my own spoon project on Tuesday, and maybe make another video!

- Keith

Lucky me, I've got a maple branch just about the right size I need to trim out of a tree in the front yard. Looks like I now need to break out the bow saw and get after it (when it quits raining).

might have to go over to jefferson memorial and go for a walk once this weather clears up....

I have some ash logs in my firewood pile. Gonna start this tonight.

Mine isn't looking that great so far lol

Looks like a great start to me!

The actual cup of the spoon is a bitch, what are you guys using for this?

86 slo-vo wrote:The actual cup of the spoon is a bitch, what are you guys using for this?

Just like the making of the spoon is a universal so is your question....lol

Someone one here mentioned the method of burning it out spoon. I used a swiss army knife to make mine, I used the smallest blade to cut a series of grooves then pry the slivers left out until it was as deep as I could effectively get it. you could cut a single groove down the center and then widen it until its the size you want. Overall its sheer determination and a constant effort.


It gives you a whole new respect for some of the spoons people make, look online and you will see strait up works of art, but for us for the most part , we can settle for a functional spoon.

Can I start out with the wooden spoon from the kitchen?

I can get it, just slow going.

Are we aloud to us sand paper? Or do I need to find a natural substitute.

Your allowed to use anything you like , The goal though is to use your bushcraft kit. If you use a natural alternative describe it to us let us know how you solved the problem. Beyond that I mean if you want to use sand paper to finish out your project , or some sort of fancy wood finish I don't think anyone here will say its not a spoon. Im sure this is the only one many people will make and if they want to take efforts to save it and finish it up nice we cant really fault them for being proud of there work.

Double post...

I am going to try to do mine with all bushcraft techniques. Not sure how it will look. Hope to not have to pluck a splinter out of my lip....

Is it too late to start hating SOL? I'm using a shaped and modded broken knife as a spoon gouge along with sandpaper. The bowl is shaped and almost finished. The layout is down and the roughing out will have to wait till tomorrow night. Here's what I got so far.

Here is where i am so far....


I think i am going to make a fork too and put them in my pack. I dont know why i have never considered doing this before.