The Art of "Reproduction"

This week I have been having a go doing some spoons in a different style from my usual ones. Mainly because I fancy exploring the different bowl shapes for a spoon and also because I have never done rounded spoon bowls. These may look simple but do require a slightly different approach when carving, the most important being to get the end bowl perfectly round and not ending up with a triangle or making look like a hexagon.

But whilst doing the style it gave me the idea of trying to reproduce it. Creating something bespoke (in spoon carving anyway) is quite easy in that each spoon will be different, possibly because each piece of wood will work in a different way facilitating in a change in design or just because you make a mistake and you have change the design to amend the mistake. But to reproduce the same style requires that you take some control of your wood/material. Not complete control but enough to make you consider “which way do I want the grain to run for this exact cut”. Reproducing will also test your carving skills, how closely you can follow plans, how mistake free you technique is, and most important of all your discipline as this becomes less about being free an easy and more about focusing on the tiny little aesthetics.

Any way I have waffled on about reproduction, here is a finished spoon on the left and its ROUGH reproduction on the right, both made out of maple. So far so good but the rough one is slightly larger at the moment and just need to be refined once it’s a little drier, and assuming/hoping that I make no mistakes it should be a good reproduction. Hopefully the 3rd one will be a little easier.


In an earlier blog I mentioned gathering spoon crooks from Peterborough. Have been slowly working with one of the crooks to create a ladle and this is the fruits of my labour. This is the first time I’ve done one since robin’s course last year and it is a little thin in place’s but should work really well in its function.


Also roughed out another possible ladle out of another crook. Remember when I mentioned about changing design due to your wood/material well this is a prime example. The crook bends to the left making it more suitable for a left handed user (which I am!). But it shows how that some pieces will have to change just because of your material.

Once I finish both of these I will show the results on here. Fingers crossed it alls go to plan :-).