On a walk the other day I noticed a thick ivy stem climbing up a tree and wondered what the wood would be like for a spoon.  I cut off a chunk and the growth rings showed it to be about 25 years old.  It carves really smoothly and produces a light strong spoon which looks a bit like birch. 

Here are a few photos taken as I was making it:

 So as I said in the last post, here are some of the knives I've made for spoon carving.  The tang extends about one third of the way into the handle and is fixed with epoxy and reinforced with a short piece of brass plated steel tube.  The handles are blackthorn or holly branches left rough and faceted for a good grip. The teardrop shaped handles are beech.

I learned the process by trawling the internet and used old Stanley plane blades for the high carbon steel.  This was annealed by putting it into my woodburning stove for the night and getting it to cherry red colour before letting the stove go out slowly overnight.  The next morning it would be soft enough to saw to shape and file on the bevel[s].  I hardened it by heating it with a propane blowtorch to cherry red again and when it became non-magnetic I quenched it in vegetable oil.  At this stage the steel is brittle hard and needs to be tempered down to a degree of softness appropriate to its future use.  For wood carving blades this is achieved by heating it to about 230c or until the cleaned up steel changes to a dull straw colour.  In my kitchen oven this took about 10 minutes and at which stage it was quenched in water and ready to fit into its handle prior to sharpening.

 I ended up making about ten blades [and throwing one away] because there are so many possible combinations of shape, thickness, angle of bevel, position of bevel, etc.  After a few spoons I have settled on two knives which seem to do all that is needed to make an average size spoon...here they are:

All you need to carve a spoon after the axe has been used to produce a basic shape.

The hook knife is double bevelled on the inside of the curve and sharpened with a micro bevel resulting in a cutting edge of about 30 degrees from horizontal. The straight blade is single bevelled and sharpened similarly.  Hook knife makers bevel their blades internally or externally and I tried both.  It seemed much easier to use an internally bevelled blade in the concave surface of a spoon as the cutting edge is in contact with the wood regardless of the angle at which it is held to the work. An external bevel can lift the cutting edge off the work if it is not held at the correct angle...but I think this means that it can produce a very fine and shallow cut if properly controlled.  Native Americans seemed to prefer an internal bevel apparently but they were using the knives for general woodworking and boatbuilding.

I think I need to splash out and buy a hook knife by Mora of Sweden as they seem to favour the external bevel and their 164 model is much favoured by spoonaholics.

This is a flat angled blade for chip carving