Morakniv Swedish Hook Knife
A high quality right hand spoon knife designed for use with a combined 30 years of spoon carving experience. It’s not very pretty or light, but it’s good for whittling. The main blade is sharp enough to do indoor stuff as well.
Spoon knife or hook knife for making spoons, kuksas and bowls from wood in a traditional way. Made in alloyed carbon steel and hardened and tempered to about 60 HRC to keep a good edge. Spoon carving with MoraKniv.Obviously, these knives can be used to carve other things too.
SK1Oak – Spoon Carving Knife 25 mm with Oak Handle
Although the knife as a whole is pretty generic looking, it gets the job done well for under twenty bucks. We hope that our reviews have helped you better understand what makes for a great hook knife and that you’ve been able to find the model which is right for you. It also weighs just 2.1 ounces, which makes it one of the lightest knives you’ll find on the market today.
On the other hand if you are one to use the push cut technique more often than not, you’ll want to stick with the 164. A single edge blade allows for the blunt side of it to be used as a stabilizer, but this carving style would have to be performed in your left hand. This is about as straightforward as you can get with a spoon carving knife.
Now, that I’ve had a chance to use the knife, I’m even more convinced I made the right decision. It very comfortable and allows a variety of grasps. The extra length gives you additional leverage for pivoting grasps. The first thing I used it on was a scrap piece of Base Wood. It cuts like the proverbial ‘hot knife through Butter’.
Now while double edge makes it incredibly versatile to right and left handed carvers, it restricts you from using your thumb as a stabilizer for push cuts. That’s not to say the finished product won’t look great because it all boils down to how you use your tools.
I really like the open sweep and the size is great for a wide variety of spoon bowls. I would advise staying away from the Mora spoon knives (162 and 164). The grind isn’t great, the 164 has a useless and frankly dangerous point at the tools for carving wooden spoons end and the two edges of the 162 stops you from using several very useful grips. Mora knives are an automatic staple among woodcarving tools. They arrive sharp, work well, last long, and they’re not from China (thank you Sweden).
I could not recommend these tools enough, thank you Mr Wood. A sharp spoon knife will only stay sharp if the edge is protected, we offer a great leather spoon knifesheath for the job.
- The Flexcut FLEXKN52-BRK has a high-quality handle and a full tang, but its price and weight keep it out of the top three.
- Highly recommended for any carver age 10 (with adult supervision) and above.
- Most simply you need a saw and several sharp wedges (an axe, a knife and a hollowing tool).
- The knife slices as I pull my hands apart, with the action coming from my upper chest and back.
- Morakniv Swedish Hook knives are ideal for carving small cups & bowls, spoons, ladles, and other deeply hollowed work.
- It’s a rare problem, but it’s always nice when you get a tool you can use right out of the box.
A hook knife with higher radius measurement is best used for carving a bowl. It is wider and covers more surface area (the knife on bottom). The best https://bestwoodcarvingtool.com/5-best-spoon-carving-tools/ is going to have a lower radius which is best for carving a smaller surface area (the knife on top). Walnut, mahogany, and butternut are also the best wood for carving spoons. Well that is where basswood excels because you don’t actually have to carve with the grain at all and that’s something that will come in handy when carving a spoon.
If you have then you know it practically takes a lifetime to accomplish. Granted, it CAN be done, but if you want the bowl of a spoon to have a smooth finish then I suggest getting the best spoon carving knife (a.k.a. “hook knife”) to do it. The only real downside to this blade is that a small fraction of the shipped units arrive dull, or less than razor sharp. It’s a rare problem, but it’s always nice when you get a tool you can use right out of the box. Overall, this is the best hook knife on the market today and one you can get for a good price, too.
I have worked wood for more than 30 years, and made several households’ worth of furniture both simple and complex. The spoon remains a greater challenge than my most ambitious court cupboard or joined and carved chest. This aspect of woodworking is about tradition, design, shapes, forms and function. https://bestwoodcarvingtool.com/ In spoon carving, you learn about edge tools, green wood and body mechanics – all while sampling a variety of local woods that might otherwise never make it to your workbench. To launch my spoon carving career, I grabbed a piece of Chinaberry from my stash and sketched an outline for the concave part.
Small Spoon knife
If you know how to sharpen it, however, this could easily be your best value buy. Special mention of the handle is in-order. I don’t have a lot of experience with Spoon Knives, but many I’ve seen have relatively short and stubby handles. I viewed Robin’s tutorial on using a Spoon Knife and when he pointed out the extended handle and explained his reasoning behind the design, it intuitively made sense.
Spoon Carving Tool Set. Wood Carving Knife Spoon Carving Knife. Best Set for Wooden Spoon carvings by Stamesky.
I also try to focus on curves, some slight, some more pronounced (see the opening photo and the photo above for a variety of shapes). A spoon that has too many flat places in it looks and feels lifeless. Because you hold it as you carve, it is easy to shift the spoon around for a different view. This is critical because the design has to work from all angles and from the hand as well as the eye. Both of the above cuts end in space; there is no stop for the knife.
A high carbon steel blade with an internal radius of 0.6 inches is hard to argue against. Even though this is number 3 on our list of best spoon carving knives it definitely deserves the number 2 spot. Unlike the 164, the Mora 162 offers a high carbon steel blade with a double edge.
I’ve already written about why you should carve a spoonand I won’t spend much time talking about the actual techniques involved in spoon carving. This article is more of a primer on what resources to gather if you want to start making spoons. This is a question I get asked quite often, so I want to take the time to talk about the tools, materials and other resources you can use to get started with spoon carving. All knives are solid options, but if you get something like the Mora 162 with the double edge blade then you have to know how to use it, or at least learn. Whereas the other two are pretty straightforward on how to use.
