Making a wooden spoon with a hatchet, a Mora and fire

An opportunity to try out my newly acquired Fiskars Hatchet

With a recently acquired Fiskars hatchet, I decided to try my hands on another wooden spoon. We were out camping overnight with our dog-ther Sox for the very first time when this spoon starts to take shape. Besides the hatchet, I used my trusty Mora and hot amber to make the spoon.

There’s a rubber plantation nearby where we camped. I found a piece of fallen branch, all dried and crisp. Rubber wood are relatively soft and it was easy to work with. First things first, I used the hatchet to do the initial shaping.

The hatchet makes wood work much easier

The Fiskars hatchet has a short handle. The blade is not overly big, and this is precisely the reason why I got it in the first place. Not really for heavy chopping but more for light work around the camp. I was really surprised at how well the hatchet worked. It was cutting through the rubber wood with ease. It wasn’t long before I have my wooden spoon outline done.

The initial stages of the spoon

The next thing I wanted to do was to start on the spoon’s cup. I used a carving knife during my first knife attempt but decided to try using red glowing amber this time. Something I saw on youtube. So, a fire was made with larger chunks of wood thrown in to provide me the ambers needed.

Bigger pieces of fire wood thrown in to make good glowing red amber

Some of the bigger pieces of red glowing amber from the fire is used to help ‘burn’ the ‘cup’ of the wooden spoon I was trying to make.

The heat from the hot amber slowly burns into the wood

The wooden spoon’s ‘cup’ slowly catches fire

I had to monitor the fire closely. There were a lot of blowing air into the spoon to keep the fire going. Occasionally, I would stop to scrap out some of the charred areas of the spoon to see the actual progress.

Eventually, the fire did all the work for me. All I had to do was to control so that it did not ‘eat’ away too much of the wood. I would say that this technique is so much easier than using a carving set. It is probably much safer as well. I then used my trusty Mora to do some of the final shaping.

Meun was there to help me video parts of the process. Will upload the video soon. The spoon itself is definitely unfinished. But I was very satisfied that I got this far, especially by using hot amber and trying out the Fiskars hatchet. I will probably have to wait for another opportunity to complete the spoon. No choice since I forgot to pack it back when we left the campsite the following day. Though I doubt if it will still be there the next time around, it will probably be more fun to do it all over again!

See also my first attempt at making a wooden spoon