Heirloom Wood: A Modern Guide to Carving Spoons, Bowls, Boards, and other Homewares
by Max Bainbridge
I bought this book purely because the idea of carving spoons has always been interesting to me. Taking a piece of wood and turning it into a simple, beautiful tool is just exciting! Typically when I want to learn something new, I’ll jump on YouTube and watch a few videos but because spoon carving is meant to be relaxing I thought it would be more fun to get this book and take some time to read.
What I like most about this book is the visual design, which might be because my college education was in graphic design but, when you think of an educational book you usually imagine a textbook with pages covered in dense text. In this book, the author includes plenty of high-quality and relevant images. The relevancy of the images is important because in a lot of woodworking books you’ll see random images just tossed in as filler that doesn’t really have anything to do with the topic being discussed on that page. The best example of this is when Max is describing the different types of cuts you’ll need to know, he includes images that show proper body position, how to hold the tool and where to position the piece of wood.
The content of this book also included way more than just how to carve a spoon. Max uses each of the projects in the book to teach you the different cutting and shaping techniques described at the beginning of the book. It really is an in-depth way to build a solid understanding of the techniques. The book also covers how to sharpen and care for all the different tools discussed, which is something that is often not covered enough in woodworking books
When I bought this book I had only expected to learn about spoon making but after reading through it, I’ve found some inspiration for techniques to bring into my furniture making as well. If you buy the book, checkout page 110 for a little hint as to what I may be trying on a future project…