Spoons - When to carve/dry/sand/finish

[amt230]

Hi - I am new to woodcarving, and have started with carving spoons. I have done some research, but have come up with conflicting opinions on what order to do each of the following steps. This is my best guess at the process of carving a spoon from a green wood blank:

1. carve
2. sand to 220
3. dry in microwave in 10 second increments
4. sand to 600, including water curing to pull out grain
5. finish

Is this correct?

Generally, I am also confused about drying options/times, and particularly with the microwave option, how you determine when it is "completely dry."

Thanks, and when the first spoon is finished I'll be sure to post a picture.

[RWG]

Spoon carving is a lot of fun, and you get something you can use when your done. Great way to get started carving. I have done a lot of spoons, but never used a microwave for drying. How much you sand depends on how shiny and finished you want the spoon to look when done. I have seen some that were sanded with 1200 grit and looked very polished and very nice, but it took a long time to do all that sanding.

Letting the wood dry naturally is my preference. I use mineral oil as a finish mostly, and apply often during the drying time. You will always need to reapply this, which is the downside of mineral oil.

If you use a hard finish such as "Salad Bowl Finish" you will still be sealing the wood, allowing it to dry slower than naturally. That is what you want. The slower you dry it, the less likely you are to have problems with the wood spliting, ect. Good luck!

[SamIamSL]

Do you have to let the wood completely dry before you put a finish on it?

3. dry in microwave in 10 second increments

I just tried the microwave drying yesterday. I had a dish I carved and put it in a paper bag in the microwave on defrost for 2 minute increments (for the spoon you're probably better off in smaller increments). I let it sit there for another 10 minutes then took it out of the microwave and let it sit for another 30 minutes and repeated that cycle. I did it a bit too long and got a few small cracks in it but they were easily sanded out.
Check out these sites for more help:
USING THE MICROWAVE TO DRY GREEN ROUGH TURNED WOOD
Microwaving Wood to Dry

[bcordell]

I have found that drying wood in a microwave has never worked for me unless I wanted to make it warp. For example, in Wood turning, I will turn a shape of a mushroom out of green wood, then microwave it. This would cause the wood to dry disproportionately and therefore cause a lot of twist and natural bending of the turned piece.
This is the only time I can think of why I would want that to happen.

For any other piece that I am using "Green Wood" I let it air dry, or I might speed up the process by using the oven on its lowest setting for a day or so, but the wife doesn't like me to do that.

[CarverFromNoWhere]

I dry spoons in the microwave all the time, I also let them air dry naturally depending on the wood. For woods like soft maple birch and poplar I will microwave other stuff like tight grained fruit woods tend to spilt so I will air dry them in a bucket on dry shavings changing the shavings weekly.

Carve
rough sand
dry
final sanding I go to 800 grit then 0000# steel wool
finish

I use a dip in beeswax to finish my spoons, once they cool down the wax will re solidify. I hold the spoons under in the double boiler set up full of pure beeswax until the little air bubbles stop coming up. Beeswax is food safe easy to use looks great has a pleasant smell like honey when your working with its renewable and easy to get.

I don't get the spoon wet when I sand it the second time, once it has bee dried I keep it dry as I can until it goes into the wax.

I have some videos on youtube the series isn't finished but the majority of them are uploaded, and if you have any questions let me know with a private message. An excellent person to discuss spoon carving with is Del Stubbs over at
Pinewood Forge Scandinavian Knives

Carl

[dennybell]

I just finished carving several spoons from Willow & Catalpa which came down in a storm about 2 months before cutting out the shapes. The wood was quite wet, so after cutting out the rough shape on my bandsaw, I immersed the spoons in a saturated salt solution for a day or two. I rinsed the wood after removing it from the salt solution and let it dry in the shop until I had an opportunity to carve them. There was no warping or splitting on any of the pieces treated this way. The only drawback was the tools that were near them as they dried developed some rust spots, probably from the salt.

Denny