Carving a dish tutorial- jonsbushcraft.com


Carving a Dish

To undertake this project you'll need a good sharp carving knife and a Spoon Knife, I recommend the 'Mora Companion Knife' and the Mora Spoon carving Knife', both can be bought on my online shop HERE To start, get yourself a log of fresh wood and chop it down the centre with an axe.
Choose which piece of wood you would rather use and carve the split surface smooth. Also carve the bottom slightly flat so your dish doesn't roll onto it's side.
Make 2 cuts where you would like the handles to meet the bowl section as shown in the picture. Mind you don't cut too deep otherwise you wont have handles at all!
Chop off the wood to form the basis of the handles.

Now round off the ends of the bowl section, draw your handle shapes on and begin to carve those to shape too.
Keep on carving untill you are happy with the shape of your dish
This carving job may take a while so if you decide to stop and carry on the next day put your work in a plastic bag so that it does'nt dry out.If the wood dries it will be harder to carve!
Now its time to carve the bowl out with your crook knife. This may take a while of carving and you will soon find out if your hands are tough enough! It maybe wise to wear leather gloves.
When you have finished all the carving work you should leave it to dry out so that you can sand all the bumps and scratches away. Green wood will just clog the sand paper and you wont get as smooth finish. Place the dish inside an open bag for a week or more, this is to slow down the drying which should prevent the wood from splitting When the wood is totally dry, sand with coarse sand paper to start, them move on to finer sand papers to get a really smooth finish. You should get all the main bumps and scratches out with the coarse paper before moving on to the finer stuff. Finally, oil the wood to bring out the natural colour and grain. I used vegetable or olive oil.