DIY wooden spoon. The road is a spoon not only for dinner: do-it-yourself wooden spoons DIY spoon carving tool

Everyone can and should carve a wooden spoon, the author believes.
For some time he collected spoons from all over the world (see second photo) and was always interested in strange spoons.
At some point, he eventually started making his own spoons.

Making a spoon using woodcarving is a lengthy exercise, but there is still room for creativity. This material is intended for beginner carvers.

Tools and materials:

Sharp carving knives, including at least a medium straight knife and a rounded or arrow-shaped knife;
- a piece of soft wood, slightly larger than a spoon;
- Sandpaper with grain size 80, 120, 220 and 400 units;
- grinding drum of small diameter (2.5 - 5 cm);
- pen or marker;
- food safe wood finishes (e.g. wax or mineral oil);

Additional power tools:

Grinding machine;
- dremel;
- jigsaw;
- table saw;

(The whole process can be done by hand. The author used power tools to create the blank to speed up the process.)

Step 2: wood

The most important thing to consider when carving a spoon is the type of wood you are going to use. While with the right tools and techniques, you can carve out almost any type of wood, some types are easier to handle than others. Since this is a spoon carving for beginners, let's try to keep it as simple as possible.

The easiest types of wood to process are soft species, eg:

Linden
- Pine
- cedar
- the Red tree
- fir

Hard rocks that are more difficult to process are:

Oak
- maple
- Walnut
- pink tree
- exotic breeds
- Tick

Follow these general points when choosing a tree:

Cut off a piece of wood and see what kind of wood.
Look for narrow fibers rather than wide fibers - wide fibers tend to fall into large pieces.
For a beginner, the easiest way to try wood carving is with linden, so it's best to start with it.

Finally, it should be noted that wood, like many of the substances we live with, can be a potential allergen for certain people. Certain wood species, such as cocobolo, have skin and respiratory effects. Other varieties, such as cherries, are known to be generally safe and inert. Wood dust from almost any tree species can have a harmful effect on the respiratory tract for a sufficiently long period of time.

Step 3: drawing the spoon

Once you have selected a piece of wood (I am using cherry in the example below), draw a very rough outline of the spoon you want to cut. This does not have to be a detailed drawing, as this diagram will only be used to create a blank spoon. Drawing a profile of the spoon is desirable but not required.

Spoon size
- type of spoon head
- should it fit in the mouth as a whole?
- the depth of the concave part
- thickness and height
- intended use - salad, soup, etc.

Step 4: create a letterhead

If the spoon you want to cut is smaller than the piece of wood you have chosen, use a table saw to cut the piece into a thinner piece so that you have to remove less material by hand when cutting.

Then use a miter saw to cut the pieces of wood to length at the ends of your spoon's outline.

This is called letterhead creation.

Step 5: cutting the parts

Use a jigsaw to cut the spoon along the outline. It is advisable to cut it as close to your spoon sketch as possible.

By making the stock slightly larger and thicker than the intended finished spoon, you can always remove the material later.

Step 6: coarse sanding

This step is completely optional, but the author followed it. He used a belt sander to quickly round the edges and sand to the contour of the spoon. Everything done with a power tool eliminates the need to do it by hand in the next thread step.

Step 7: go to thread

Carving along the handle of a spoon is the easiest place to practice. Start with small particles, removing a small amount of material by cutting away from you.

Begin to remove small pieces of material from the tops of the curved lines. Cutting down into the groove is more difficult.
Dipping the knife downward usually results in a larger piece of material chipping off than intended.

It takes time - for example, several hours - to transform a square block into a smooth spoon. So don't expect the spoon to instantly take shape. Just move slowly towards the goal.

Step 8: add more detail

As the spoon begins to take shape and you start to round some of the straight lines in the piece, decisions need to be made regarding:

Handle thickness
- how the handle should taper and fit the hand
- how long should the handle be
- how wide the spoon should be
- will the spoon have a curved or flat leading edge
- spoon head thickness

The spoon pictured below has a blunt, straight head, more like a spatula, which is good for scrubbing the bottom of a saucepan ... of course it's not a very good soup spoon.

Step 9: back of the spoon head

Once the handle of the spoon is machined, it's time to start working on the head. It is easier to start with the convex back of the spoon rather than the concave side.

Begin removing material around the edges of the workpiece and round off the head of the spoon to create a smooth transition from the back of the spoon to the rim.

Continue to round the back of the spoon and create an even, continuous slope.

Step 10: front of the spoon

On the concave side of the spoon - Use a rounded arrow-shaped knife or hook to begin removing material from the surface of the spoon.

Remove small pieces of wood until a small indentation begins to form. Continue removing material, picking wood closer and closer to the outside wall of your spoon.

The hook knife is useful for shallow hacking, but does not work very well at depth. This is where the arrow-shaped knife comes in handy.

Step 11: Finishing by sanding

Making wooden spoons is a simple and fun process that allows you to touch the age-old traditions of arts and crafts. To create such products, a minimum of tools and materials are required. Making spoons with your own hands is a great opportunity to hone your basic carving skills and get a better feel for how a tree and a carving tool behave. You can experiment with the shape and size of the spoon, as well as the design of its handle, creating unique utensils that are not only decorative, but also functional.

In our material, we will tell you in detail how to make a spoon with your own hands, we will introduce you to the basic techniques of carving and answer urgent questions regarding the manufacture of wooden dishes.

What are wooden spoons made of?

What kind of wood is best for carving wooden dishes? This important question worries all novice carvers. For cutting spoons best fit hardwood, but not chopped hardwood - aspen, ash, maple, birch, elm, walnut, cherry or maple.

Novice carvers it is better to use linden. This wood is softer and lighter, has a uniform density and planes well in all directions. To gain experience and practice basic carving skills, this is the most suitable material. Among other things, linden products are not prone to warping and do not emit tannins.

Coniferous trees unsuitable for the manufacture of spoons due to its high resin content and characteristic odor. Also avoid exotic tropical woods like teak, which can be toxic.

Planks can be used as a blank, or a whole log log can be split into small pieces of wood. The first option is more practical, the second is more traditional. The orientation of the wood fibers in the workpiece determines the symmetry of the spoon bowl pattern as shown in the photo.

A set of basic tools

To make a wooden spoon with your own hands, you need a minimum set of simple tools:

1. Knife... For wood carving, it is better to use the Bogorodsky knife. Its double-sided sharpening makes it equally convenient to work both "from oneself" and "from oneself", and a narrow spout makes it possible to cut wood along the inner lines.
2. Lozhkorez (scraper)... This is a steeply curved chisel designed for scraping wood in grooves and for working the inner walls when carving utensils. An alternative to the spoon cutter can be a wide cranberry or a regular semicircular chisel.
3. Straight chisel - used for smooth cutting of solid wood from the workpiece.
4. Clamp - is necessary for convenient fixing of the piece of wood.
5. File for roughing and sandpaper of various grain sizes (320, 180 and 120 grit) for a flawless sanding of the product.
6. Shtikhel - thin steel cutter for creating decorative carvings on the handle.

How to carve a spoon from wood: a step-by-step guide

1. Using the template, transfer the top and side views onto the piece of wood. Please note that the orientation of the wood fibers is longitudinal, in this case the spoon will have maximum strength.

1. Having secured the workpiece with a clamp, proceed to roughly shaping the bowl. For these purposes, a spoon cutter is used, but you can also limit yourself to an ordinary semicircular chisel or a wide cranberry. Sampling of wood is made in the direction of the grain When deepening the bowl, remember to leave a small thickness allowance for fine trimming and sanding.

It is much more convenient to gouge a bowl on a rectangular workpiece, since the piece of wood is rigidly fixed and maintains a stable position.

1. When the depression is formed, you can start cutting the excess array in the horizontal and vertical planes, following the upper and lateral contours. For this, it is most convenient to use a jigsaw or a band saw, but if you wish, you can perform all the manipulations with a straight chisel or hacksaw.

1. Using the Bogorodsky knife, we cut off the convex part of the spoon. With a wide chisel we give the bowl a perfectly even rounded shape. Using a knife and a chisel, we work out the shape of the handle.

1. Using the spoon cutter, trim the bowl finely and carefully align the edges as shown in the picture.

1. Grinding is carried out in two or three passes, each time reducing the grain size of the abrasive.

Advice!

On contact with water, even a perfectly sanded surface can begin to lint. The raised pile does not spoil the appearance of the spoon, but it is unpleasant in the mouth. Therefore, if you plan to use your own hand-made dishes for their intended purpose, you can solve this problem in the old proven way. After grinding, the spoon is moistened and thoroughly dried, passing over again with a fine-grained abrasive. This procedure is repeated two to three times.

Our version of making a spoon is more of an adapted technique. It is designed to use a modern tool that, although it simplifies the workflow, at the same time removes it from the age-old traditions of carving art.

The secrets of the primordially Russian carving of a wooden spoon - see the video presented:

How to cover a wooden food spoon?

The final touch of creating a wooden spoon is its processing with a finishing compound. And here, as a rule, many questions arise. If you are cutting a decorative spoon, then everything is simple: you can paint it with paint, apply any varnish or wax it. With products that are planned to be used for their intended purpose, everything is more complicated. When choosing a composition for impregnation, it is important that it is practical and safe.

In the Russian tradition, wooden spoons were used and continue to be used. This impregnation is environmentally friendly, has antibacterial properties, emphasizes the texture of the wood, and is easy to apply. But it will have to be updated periodically. At the same time, using raw linseed oil as a finishing, over time it can begin to transmit an unpleasant rancid smell to food.

A more practical solution is to use special mineral oils for finishing wooden dishes. Such impregnation gives the surface water-repellent properties, while it does not form a film - the pores remain open and the wood continues to breathe. Mineral oils do not affect the taste of food and are more persistent.

We spoke in detail about the practicality and food safety of finishing compositions in ours.

The process of making a spoon is simple and unchanged for many centuries.

There is enough information about the spoon-carving business, either in carving textbooks or on the Internet.
However, we cannot help but highlight how we make our spoons.

The description of this process will be a kind of "master class" for those who have never made a spoon themselves, but want to try to learn how to do it.

So, we choose the material. In our choice of material for spoons, we have so far settled on linden (a very soft and pleasant wood for carving) and birch (harder, harder to cut, but very beautiful glossy cut and expressive texture). Spoons can be made from different types of wood, be it oak, alder, cedar, beech, juniper, bird cherry, apple, etc. Each breed is good in its own way. Some spoons are very light, some stronger, some more fragrant. The choice is yours.
Our blanks are dry lime or birch sticks 5 cm by 2.5 cm and 24 cm long (this is for a large spoon) and 17 cm (for a nursery). On them we draw a drawing-outline of the future spoon with a pencil.

After that, we cut off everything unnecessary with an ax, first in one plane and then in another. Here is a nuance. You can do this right away with a knife, but the process will be physically more time consuming. The ax is faster and more efficient. The more we process with an ax, the less then efforts for revision with a knife.

With a knife we \u200b\u200bbring the future spoon to an almost full-fledged look (the same rule - the better we finish it with a knife, the less polish).

The next step is to choose "scooped". It is important not to overdo it here. If you choose too deep (a beginner's mistake), then after grinding the walls of the "scoop" will turn out to be too thin, and this will reduce the durability of the spoon.

Well, here's a spoon, just unpolished. If you wish, you can eat even this, but we move on. We grind in several stages. First with coarse sandpaper, then medium, then fine and at the end with a super fine. The hardest thing is to scoop, so the cleaner it is chosen, the easier. Here it is, a beautiful, completely ready-to-use, little white spoon. It is not for nothing that spoons at this stage are called “linen”.
When we started carving spoons. then we immediately planned that this work would not become routine, but be as creative as possible, so we began to make our spoons as some kind of carved miniatures. To do this, a drawing is applied to the finished polished spoon (here the imagination is limitless to the level of skill) and cut out. There is no point in describing the carving process, since this is a separate topic.
Each spoon has its own style, its own image. And accordingly, various types of carving: relief, planar, geometric from it, ornaments, mini sculptures, etc. It depends on the type of thread, respectively, on the image of the spoon itself, whether to grind the carved elements or not. Sometimes you need a gloss, and sometimes you want to see, on the carving, traces of how the master's knife wielded.
Well, now "Starodubovskaya Spoon" is ready. Now she began her own life, given to her. It remains to process with oil.

We take linseed oil, heat it slightly and put a spoon in it. After soaking for a short time, dry it. Some of the villi rise up on it. We grind all this. The last stage, in its effectiveness, is rather relative. Spoons not treated with oil serve just as reliably (if the material is dry) with the only difference that during the first use they are rougher, but this is also smoothed over time by the very process of use. So if someone likes pure white spoons, they can safely use them (having ordered untreated ones in advance).

In everyday life, all people use spoons, perhaps except for representatives of some Asian countries who prefer wooden sticks. And when the question arises in choosing this dining utensil, many, without much hesitation, go to the store and buy them, focusing on their taste and budget.

A wooden spoon most often has a decorative function, but it can also be used for its intended purpose.

More and more people are attracted by wooden dishes, they have a special flavor and it is very pleasant to eat from them. This article will focus on how to make a wooden spoon with your own hands without much experience and with a minimum of tools.

Required tool

First, you need to decide what should be at hand for making wooden spoons:

• Bar - not all breeds are equally good for making spoons, it is best to use aspen, birch, cedar or juniper. The log itself must be well dried;
• Marker - or a pencil, it will be required to mark the contours of the future spoon on the workpiece;
• Ax - it is best to take a small hatchet, with its help the initial preparation of the bar is carried out;
• Knife - should be comfortable and sharp, it will be needed for more delicate processing of the workpiece;
• Cluckars - a special figured chisel, it differs in the changed shape of the working point. For making spoons with your own hands, cranberries with an arcuate point are used;
• Sandpaper - for grinding a spoon;
• Flax oil - coating with linseed oil will serve as protection against the negative effects of water;
• Drill - a special ball-shaped attachment for grinding rounded surfaces is sold on it. You can also use a drill to drill a hook hole in the handle of the spoon.

DIY step-by-step instructions for making a wooden spoon

Wood selection

In order for the spoon to be comfortable and practical, it is important to choose the right type of wood. You should stop your gaze on hard types of wood, so that the future spoon would last longer.

For a spoon, choose cedar, aspen, or juniper.

An ideal option would be a pre-prepared and dried birch or aspen log. If you make a spoon from raw wood, then over time it will bend.

Preparation for work

In order to make a wooden spoon with your own hands, drawings and templates for making it should be prepared in advance. The clarity of the process is the key to success in any business.

The place for hand-made wooden spoons must be freed from unnecessary items, leaving only what is necessary.

Workpiece characteristics

When making a wooden spoon from a bar, you should remember that it must be of certain dimensions. For a tablespoon, a bar measuring 300x100x60 mm will do, where the first number is length, second width, third thickness.

If you are using a piece of wood, cut it in half and approximate the dimensions shown above.

Markup

Using a marker or pencil, draw well the contours of the future spoon along the template. There can be many options, although you can come up with them yourself.

Primary processing

Use a hatchet to chop off excess wood around the outlines of the spoon. Work the workpiece without reaching the edges of the spoon, outlined with a marker about 8-10 mm. This step is due to the fact that the wood fibers can be twisted after drying, and you will splinter off the excess, thereby spoiling the workpiece.

Cut the workpiece a little more markings, taking into account the final grinding of the product.

It is important to observe safety precautions! Working with an ax in the process of making spoons with your own hands is the most dangerous, carelessness can lead to injuries. Watch your fingers before hitting the ax!

At the same time, try not to make a margin of more than 1 cm, the knife processing process is more laborious. The more accurately you prepare the workpiece with a hatchet. The less work is left.

Spoon cavity

Arm yourself with corkars and without a hammer, and relying only on the strength of your hands, start gradually choosing a "hole" in the workpiece. For more accurate work, it is better to draw the wall thickness. The best handmade craftsmen have very thin walls, 4-5mm thick, if this is your first job, then it is better not to risk it and make the walls 7-8mm. You should go deeper, focusing on your own preferences and the thickness of the workpiece.

If there is not enough imagination, then you can draw a circle of the recess by making a template taken from a finished wooden spoon. You can see the solution in the video attached to the post.

Knife processing

Secondary processing will give the wooden spoon an almost final look. The knife should have a short but sharp blade. Cut off any excess carefully. As mentioned above, you can give the shape of a wooden spoon whatever you want, only the imagination and the abilities of your hands will become a limitation.

Comment! If you make a spoon with your own hands in nature for urgent purposes, then processing with a knife will be quite enough, eating ear from roughly processed dishes is even more pleasant.

Many people make the mistake of cutting wood by guiding a knife into excess areas and hitting it with a hammer. This is not worth doing, because of the same twisted fibers. By doing so, you risk spoiling the spoon.

Deepening in a spoon is most handy to "choose" with cranberries.

The shape of the handle can also be any, if you want to make a set of wooden spoons, then all typical elements should be in equal proportions, especially the handle. To do this, draw templates or download drawings from the Internet. Although a self-made original template will delight the eye much more.

Processing the back of a wooden spoon is one of the most crucial moments. Many amateurs, making their first sample with their hands, try to make the spoon too graceful and remove the extra layer during processing.

Important to remember! Wood is a specific material, it is heterogeneous, knots may come across in it, or there may be hidden cavities. When cutting out the back side with a knife, be very careful, you can spoil the spoon in the final stage of processing.

Internal surface treatment

For this, a special drill attachment is best suited, they are different. The essence of processing is to grind the concave surface of the spoon without damaging it.

If you do not have a round nozzle, you can replace it with a rubber one with an attachment for a sandpaper petal. But in this case, be very careful during the grinding process, you cannot put pressure on the drill, otherwise the fastening bolt located in the middle of this attachment may leave deep grooves on the surface of the spoon.

To fix it, the spoon should be placed in a vice, it is very dangerous to hold it in your hands, because the drill can jump off and injure you. But it is necessary to fix it with gaskets, this will avoid damage to the surface of the spoon with the jaws of the vice.

Grinding a spoon

One of the most enjoyable processes in making a spoon with your own hands. If you have little experience in working with wood, most likely, after processing with a knife, the spoon remained far from ideal. Sandpaper grades from P240 to P280 will help to remove irregularities, it is ideal for working with hard wood species.

Grinding is the final stage of manufacturing, carried out with sandpaper.

Thinner grinding should be done with grades P400 - P600, with their help you can prepare the surface for painting or under varnish.

Water resistant

A hand-made wooden spoon will serve its owner for a long time, if he takes care of its protection from water in a timely manner.

As you know, with regular wetting, wood deteriorates! Various oils are used for the coating, flaxseed, tung and others. The choice lies with the manufacturer.

Oiling a spoon is easy, especially if you've made a hole in its handle. In this case, the spoon suspended from the hook can be completely processed. After drying, apply another layer of oil to its surface.

We hope the question of how to make a wooden spoon with your own hands is completely exhausted. As you can see, there is nothing complicated in this process, and it is possible that making wooden dishes will become your new hobby.

Video: DIY wooden spoon

Today I want to talk about how to carve a wooden spoon. Six months ago, I suddenly really wanted to make something out of wood. And to do it for a reason, but with benefit. Of course, one of the most popular items in this case is a wooden spoon. Before getting down to business, I read various articles, but many of them seemed too complicated and after reading them, it was not completely clear from which side to approach the manufacture of a wooden spoon. In fact, everything turned out to be much simpler and you need to read less and try more. So let's go.

To make a wooden spoon, we need the following items:

• Material (wood)
• Ax (optional)
• Lozhkorez
• Sandpaper

Training

Material

The very first mistake I made when making the first spoon was the wrong choice of wood. I took a piece of pine board of unknown age and began to cut from it. Pine is a soft tree, I thought, so it should be normal. But in fact, it turned out to be not normal, but damn difficult, and I never finished the first spoon. In general, no dried wood, boards from the store, etc.

To make a spoon, we need a fresh (not dried) wood, preferably soft wood. There is a lot of information about tree species, so you yourself can familiarize yourself and choose the soft wood species that is most available in your area. Oak makes very strong and beautiful spoons, but start with something softer. I really like spruce or pine, their smell and pleasant feeling when cutting.

The important point is the search for the tree itself. I urge you not to cut the first living tree you come across, but take the time and try to find a tree recently felled, cut down by others and abandoned or dying. It is rather sad to see good trees thoughtlessly cut down to make natural and sustainable crafts. For me, the search for material is also a kind of process and can take several hours, and maybe days. In general, take care of nature and use its resources wisely.

Tool

Saw

For making a spoon at home, absolutely any hacksaw is suitable. But when looking for material or cutting a spoon in the field, it is best to have a compact folding hacksaw. An excellent choice for a reasonable price is the Bahco Laplander saw, which I can safely recommend for purchase.

Ax

Above, I indicated that the ax is optional. This is because a saw and a knife are enough to make a small wooden spoon. The ax becomes relevant when it is necessary to make a large spoon or mug (kuksu) and greatly saves time during the initial (rough) processing of the workpiece. I use a Fiskars X-7 ax.

Knife

Perhaps most of the work when carving a wooden spoon is done with a knife. The knife should be with a fixed blade, short in length and of moderate width. Carbon steel knives have excellent cutting qualities. Don't think that a good knife will be expensive. For 400-500 rubles, you can purchase a wonderful carbon knife Morakniv Basic, which is best suited for woodworking.

Lozhkorez

Although the spoon cutter gets a little less work than a knife, it will be very difficult to cut a spoon without it. You can do without it and use only a knife. But in this case, it is unlikely that it will be possible to make a rounded spoon, and the process itself will not be easy. Somehow, for the sake of experiment, I tried to make a spoon without a spoon cutter and it turned out to be a rather convenient spoon for coffee or spices. But for making a real spoon, so that you can also enjoy the process, the presence of a spoon cutter is required.

I wasn’t sure if I would like to cut spoons and wondered if I would give up on the first try. Therefore, I decided to save some money and bought an inexpensive spoon cutter Tatyanka. My first mistake was the wrong choice of material, but the second was buying this spoon cutter. I made a few spoons for them. He was dull very quickly, he sharpened poorly, and was small in size. In general, I suffered a lot and in the end he broke down, could not stand it. It was replaced by a Morakniv 164 spoon cutter. And then I realized that this is happiness. After Tatyanka, I had the feeling that Mora was cutting wood like butter, which gave incredible pleasure when making the first spoons with Mora's help. I highly recommend purchasing the Morakniv 164 spoon cutter, even if you are just starting out, because a bad spoon cutter can simply discourage you from doing anything further. You can also look at the Morakniv 162, which features a double-edged blade, which is sometimes very convenient.

Process

Finally we got to the very process of making a simple wooden spoon, which is very convenient to use for sugar, salt, coffee and other spices.

We will not immediately try to make a large spoon, let's start with a small one, 15-17 cm long. To do this, we need a block of the appropriate length and 4-5 cm in diameter. Saw it off and remove the bark with a knife.

Now you need to make one of the sides of the log flat. To do this, cut off the excess tree with a knife by about ⅓ along its entire length.

We give a rounded shape to one of the ends of the log (where the scoop will be). So far, quite rough, but as symmetrical as possible.

It's time to take a spoon cutter and start making a depression with gentle circular motions. Not yet at full depth, but not entirely superficial. I usually do the deepening in several passes, alternating with the processing of other parts of the product.

Having achieved the result approximately as in the photo, you can proceed to give the workpiece its final look by gradually shaving it off with a knife.

Now it looks like a spoon. You can proceed to the holder (handle) and, if desired, make a decorative top.

Now it is no longer something similar, but a real spoon that you can take and use. But she's all rough and clumsy. A snack in field conditions will do, but giving one is somehow not very good. To give the spoon an attractive look, we will use sandpaper (pelt). It is advisable to have in the arsenal a skin of different grain size and start processing the largest and finally finish fine.After 10 minutes of processing, the spoon takes on a completely disagreeable look and it is no longer a shame to give this one.

A small wooden spoon usually does not require special conditions for drying and dries normally even with rather low humidity in a city apartment. Do not put a freshly cut spoon in a very dry place on purpose, this will speed up its drying and can cause cracks. When making a large spoon, the risk of cracking increases, so I recommend that you wrap the product with a dry cotton cloth immediately after use and put it in a plastic bag. Change the fabric to dry once a day and repeat this for several days. The more massive the product, the more demanding it is for drying conditions. So, for example, when making a large wooden mug (kuksa), drying in this way can last from three weeks, but one and a half months!

You can stop there, but if you plan to use a spoon for liquid foods, it is best to soak it in linseed oil. We do the impregnation after complete drying. Ordinary vegetable oil can be used, but it will go rancid and the odor from the spoon will not be very pleasant. If the spoon is small, then it will be enough to coat it several times with heated oil using a brush. If the product is rather large, or if there is a desire to make the impregnation more thorough, then you can hold the spoon in oil in a water bath for 20-30 minutes. Perhaps I will talk more about this in another post.

This is where I will end. Good luck making your first wooden spoon!