Wooden shovels

This is a trailer for a documentary, "The Last Shovel Maker" featuring  Harvey Ward, age 87, as he makes a wooden shovel using traditional tools.

Shovels like this would have been used for moving dangerous materials like gunpowder which could be ignited by a spark from a metal shovel, or grains which were believed to be bruised by metal.


You can watch the full film at Folkstreams. (10 minutes)

Spoon carving in London

This interesting news item from the BBC about "Barn the Spoon" is worth a watch.  Barnaby Carder used to live and work in the woods, whittling spoons from trees, but managed to earn enough money to be able to open a store in Hackney, where he spends his days working in the window where passers by can see him in action. 

The man who makes his living whittling wooden spoons

Clog making, spoon carving and chairmaking in Sweden, 1923

This silent movie from Sweden shows traditional woodworkers making clogs, spoons and chairs.

Exploring spoons

When is a spoon not a spoon? Woodcarver Bertie Sømme discusses some of his more bizarre spoon designs.

Sasano-Bori wood carving

Sasano-Bori are traditional Japanese carvings of birds. They are made from small branches using a carving tool called a Sarukiri, more like a meat cleaver than anything we use in the west for carving wood. Farmers in the village of Sasano spend their winters sitting by the fire carving the sasanobori birds, which were originally made to solicit the favor of the gods during war.[1][2]

Carve a wooden spoon

Today I have a set of three videos showing Robin Wood carving a wooden spoon.

This first clip shows Robin using an axe to split a log and rough out the spoon. When I first saw this I thought he must be live in a bachelor pad, but apparently not.


Now he starts refining the shape with a knife.


Robin ends his work with a curved knife to hollow out the spoon.


In this final video, Robin's wife Nicola shows how she finishes the spoon without using abrasives.


Robin and Nicola run spoon carving courses from their home in Edale in the beautiful Peak District of England.

Carving a celtic design

Bernie Fay of carvingceltic.com shows how he adds a celtic design to a toy chest:

Traditional craft in Malaysia

This report looks at how cultural changes in Malaysia are affecting traditional arts and crafts such as woodcarving and shadow puppet shows, and asks how they can best be preserved in the face of both modernisation and conservative Islam which is sweeping the country.