Beginning Carving: Wood Utensils

Come immerse yourself in a three-day carving adventure! Chips will fly and participants will go home with a series of wooden utensils they can use in their cooking and eating lives. We will think about how the form of an object relates to its use in a range of utensils—the cheese spreader, the scoop, the cooker, the spatula, the ladle, and of course the eating spoon. The first project will be a cheese spreader or butter knife that will acquaint you with essential skills like cutting with the grain, fairing curves, tapering, and beveling. You will then make a utensil that contains a bowl of some kind. We will use a variety of gouges to remove material effectively down in a hollow, learning how the shape of a tool determines the shape of what it cuts. Except for the bandsaw, which will be optional, this is a hand tools class. Tools we will use include draw knives, carving knives, gouges, spokeshaves, scrapers, rasps, and files. You will have the chance to work with both dried hardwood as well as green wood so you can get a sense of how carving feels in each. Decorative elements on utensils like milk painting, chip carving, and incised line making will be demonstrated. The goals of the class will be getting the feel for the tools, becoming sensitive to wood and its character, and learning how to execute designs in three dimensions. Participants will move through projects at their own pace, experiment with their own designs, and explore the simple, the elegant, the twisted, and quirky world of wood utensils.

Workshops run from 9:00am to 5:00pm each day
Lunch is included for all participants