Camp Spatula

I had been wanting to make a spatula for a while. My friend Nathan had recently finished one that was pretty styling and I wanted to see what would come through my hands. So when this woman Anna I met at the Orcas ferry landing asked me to make her a camp spatula I knew it was destiny! Soon after putting the wish out there to find the perfect piece of wood for it, my mother brought along a huge trunk of Lilac she had gotten from a job recently. At the base it was just wide enough for this small spatula! Perfect!

The blank was roughed out with a hatchet at my teacher Walter Henderson's community wood shop. I have been practicing roughing out blanks with a hatchet more lately. I want to get a good hewing hatchet of my own, but any sharp hatchet or ax will do in a pinch. The shop has a couple really nice ones. In roughing out the handle end I saw the face of an animal and tried to bring out the spirit of a fox there. Nobody I asked saw a fox, but someone saw the doglike nose as I had. I suppose it could be whatever you see it as. I have been wanting to try carving a spoon handle in the design of the canoes used by people in the Salish Sea.

The design of this handle is largely inspired by this shape, and also just came along through happenstance.

This was a great pleasure to carve! I want to make more spatula!