Salt Scoop

 

I was watching Richard Raffan on Youtube, and he was demonstrating how he makes his little scoops. It struck me that it would be a good way of using up little teensy scraps of nice timber, so I thought I'd give it a go.

This one is in matai (I think), and is very small — only 65mm long, and 17mm in diameter. I oiled it with rice bran oil, so it's food-safe.

One thing I learned from this is not to be too stingy about the waste, and to give it a decent bite in the chuck. This one I knocked off its axis and had to try to reseat, and though I got it turning mostly true, it was never really the same again.

Also, if I was to do these on a regular basis, I would definitely have to make myself a custom small bowl scraper for carving out the bowl. I bodged up this one using my swan-neck carbide scraper, because it was the only tool I had with a small enough cutting edge to get in there. It worked, but it was not ideal for the task.