Spoon Carving and Campfire Cooking

Sixteen Successfully Seasoned Spoon Carvers

On August 23, Joe Brien of Lost Arts workshops demonstrated how to light a fire without matches. We used flint and steel to create a spark in charcloth, then friction of a bow drill to ignite a bit of wood. The tiny ember was carefully transferred to a tinder pack of very fine combustible materials and encouraged to burn with a light breath of air. Once we got a fire started we turned to our spoons.

Starting with pre-cut blanks of easy-to-carve basswood, we learned to keep a safe distance from our neighbors, to carve away from ourselves, and to work with the grain of the wood. Sometimes we levered against an angle of the spoon to round corners and edges.


We left the bowl of the spoon to be hollowed with a live ember from the fire. Holding the ember in place with a scrap of wood, we blew on the coal until the area we wished to remove was charred and brittle. Then we scraped away the burned wood with our wood scrap and/or sandpaper.


Wyatt Whiteman of 1760's Farm House prepared a vegetable stew in a cast iron dutch oven hung over the fire by a tripod The soup and spoons were finished in time for lunch.

For Wyatt's DVD on Hearth Cooking: 1760farmhouse
Visit lostartworkshops for info on Joe's workshops.
Joe's presentation was funded by individual donations and
a grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism