I had some free time over the holiday break, so I decided to play with what I’d consider some non-standard wooden utensil designs. I’ve hand carved a bunch of spatulas and spoons, mostly similar to the ones in the middle, but I’ve never done spurtles or a strainer spoon before. So I cut the blanks on my band saw to get the rough shapes of each, and then grabbed my draw knife, my spokeshave, and my hook knife and went to work.

Now, let me caveat that I’ve never seen a spurtle, slotted spurtle, or strainer spoon in person before, let alone held one. So I was really going purely off pictures of what I’ve seen on the internet as inspiration and direction.

For the spurtle and slotted spurtle, I wanted to try to offset the handle from the blade or paddle a bit. Given that they are meant more for stirring or turning, not flipping like a spatula, I also wanted to leave the blade a bit thicker for strength so I left them about 1/8″ thick. I probably could have gone a bit thinner, and I may try that in the future depending on how practical I find these in regular usage.

For the strainer spoon, well, I really wasn’t certain how this was going to turn out – and to be completely transparent, I’m not really even certain why someone would use one. It’s not something that was used in the cuisine and cooking styles I grew up around.

These were all carved from cherry wood, are roughly 12″ in length, and finished with mineral oil and board butter. Although they were all fun experiments, I don’t see adding them to my regular production sets as of this point. I think they all need a fair amount of tweaking and I need to get much more efficient at producing them.

Not certain what type of finish you want to add to your new piece? Check out our series on eco-friendly wood finishes. We detail options for oils, waxes, water-based finishes, shellac, milk paint, and citrus and plant based solvents. We give you all of the details you need to make an informed choice about the right type of finish to choose for your latest project.

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