Bushcraft: Carving a Wooden Spoon and a Hooked Knife Handle at the Log Cabin

While boiling maple syrup on the fire at the off grid log cabin, I practice bushcraft by carving a wooden serving spoon with a Haida carving knife that I carved a handle for earlier. I carved the knife handle from a piece of hard sugar maple, installed the blade with brass rivets and wrapped the handle with braided decoy anchor line. I coated the string serving with wood glue and sanded it and the maple wood handle smooth with 220 grit sandpaper. I sharpened the hook blade with three sharpening stones, from coarse to fine and then finished it off on the leather strop.
Once the carving knife was assembled and sharpened, I split a piece of hard yellow birch with my splitting froe, axe and Adventure Sworn knife and use a combination of a small straight blade carving knife, the 4" bushcraft knife and the Haida carving (hook blade) knife. Once it was close to the finished shape, I sanded it with 80 grit sandpaper, then 150 grit, then 220 grit. I dipped the spoon in water to raise the grain and set it out to dry in the wind and sun and then sanded it again.Show more

The wooden spoon is to be used for serving one pot meals cooked on the open fire and the wood stove, so the handle is long and the bowl deep. The wood is extremely strong and tight-grained. I sealed it with two coats of mineral oil, sanding lightly between coats. I'll reseal it a few times over the next month or two and then maybe twice per year.

While I'm working on the knife and spoon, my wife and dog Cali are there. My wife is helping with the sap boiling and preparing meals while I'm tending to the fire. Our golden retriever is a retrieving fanatic and is constantly asking me to throw her training dummy to retrieve. When I'm not doing that for her, she sleep on the front porch of the tiny house log cabin and chases the red squirrels that roam the property around the cabin.