Research

The Ancient Egyptians made their utensils out of wood, flint, and ivory, and were primarily used by Egyptian Pharaohs and members of the clergy. Today, wooden spoons are generally medium to large spoons used for mixing ingredients for cooking or baking. They may be flat or have a small dip in the middle. They are still used for stirring many different kinds of food and beverages, especially soups and casseroles during preparation, although they tend to absorb strong smells such as onion and garlic. Wooden spoons are generally preferred for cooking because of their versatility. Wooden spoons have been made in virtually every nation on earth and represent the ordinary artisan and reflect the life of ordinary folk. Each region, sometimes each village, will produce its own very distinct style and type of spoon. Distinctive painted spoons have been made in the Khokhloma region of Russia for nearly 200 years, originally for domestic use and in more recent times as tourist objects. Today you can hardly find a house without a wooden spoon. We use wooden utensils for cooking, eating, measuring ingredients or just as a decoration.

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 Historically wooden cooking spoons were made of hardwood and they were always very popular all over the world. Even today there are a lot of craftsmen who produce millions of wooden cooking spoons a year to cover the consumer demand. Today modern craftsmen produce wooden spoons with a help of a special equipment that allows them to lessen manual work and at the same time increase their production.  A master takes a wooden log and splits it in half with a help of an ax, and then in a few more poles. 

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 All you need is a piece of wood, knife and desire. Yet the first spoon you make can look ugly and crooked, but still it may function very well.  To make a good looking and decent wooden spoon you need a set of simple tools that you can find in any house. A craftsman is using a template of a future spoon that he applies on the cleaned up wooden pole. Depending on the purpose of the spoon, there are spoons of different forms – round, oval, flat or bulky. Clutching the piece of wood in a vice, a master cuts the wood off the future spoon. By the way, unlike other type of wood carving, spoons are made of raw wood and then dried out when they are ready. Some craftsmen store tree logs in high grass so that the wood would not dry out. With a help of an ax a master gives a form to the back of the spoon. Any tool will do for this stage of the process. You can cut the excess of the wood with the help of a knife, hacksaw or chisel, it just depends on how much time and effort you want to spend. After you finish this first cutting stage, a spoon looks like a hemisphere it is deep, bulky and not very comfortable to use yet, but its form is already closer to a classical wooden spoon. 

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Once the handle is ready, it is time to scrape out the scoop of the spoon. Usually they keep the width of the walls 3-4 millimeters. Because if they do them thinner, the spoon might be more beautiful but less practical as it will serve less time . When it comes to grinding a wooden spoon, you can do it manually using a sandpaper or with a help of a machine.

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 Therefore, after grinding a spoon is wetted and dried again, and then polished once more. They repeat this process few times in order to reach the maximum quality and smoothness of the wood. Finally the wooden spoons are almost ready. The last stoke is to coat them with oil. Some massive wooden kitchen utensils are soaked in oil for a while. 

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