Recently, my wife purchase a large pot so that she can cook soups in bulk and freeze them. That way, when she doesn't feel like making dinner, we can just thaw out some nice homemade soup. She asked me nicely if I could make her a wooden spatula that was long enough so that she could stir the pot. I am a reasonably smart man. This was not something to take months to get to so I dropped what I was doing and immediately started working on it. I used the current wooden spatula for a rough idea of thickness and made it bigger so that it would work well.
As for wood, I do a lot of my projects in cherry and I had the perfect board of scrap for it. As to the woodwork, it was rather straight forward. I used a mixture of saws, hand planes, spoke shaves, saws, rasps, files and sand paper to get it to the desired shape. The hardest part was trying to get the two shoulders even on the sides for the main blade. They are, unfortunately, asymmetrical. Such is the limitation of my skills. It will work just fine.
My wife was insistent that I put my makers mark on it so she could proudly display it in the kitchen on the wall rather than hidden in a drawer. I happily obliged. I think she was more excited about this project than the bread box I made her within the past year. That's fine. Happy wife, happy life.
It will be a working utensil. I have been using wooden spatulas for over 30 years so I am fine with them. However, I wanted to try and minimize the grain raising that would occur when it was cleaned. Not sure if this will help but I soaked the spatula in hot running water then let it dry and then very lightly removed the raised grain with well worn 400 grit sand paper. I did this an additional three cycles of hot water, let dry, lightly sand. It should be good enough.
With the grain raising and sanding done, it was time to apply an oil finish. This will be controversial but read all before commenting as. I finished it with three light coats of olive oil over three days. ???!??? YES, olive oil. You say, it will go rancid. I didn't have mineral oil and didn't feel like going out and buying it. Also, I don't put mineral oil on anything I eat. I DO put olive oil on things I eat and like. I'm not convinced this is a real world problem as much as a theoretical problem. If it goes rancid, soap and water should remove it. Oh, did I mention that Chris Schwarz uses olive oil? The link is More of Katy’s ‘Soft Wax’ for Sale – Lost Art Press and is in the comments at the end of the article. In case the link fails in the future, it comes from the Lost Art Press posting from 18May2016 and is located in the comments section "I hear this all the time. But I have used olive oil and walnut oil on my wooden kitchen utensils for 25 years and nothing has even gone rancid. And Roy Underhill has used olive oil on his oilstones his entire career. No rancidity. I’m sure there’s an explanation, but I don’t have it." If it is good enough for Chris and Saint Roy, it is good enough for me. Oh, one last point, you tell my Portuguese wife that her most favored imported olive oil that she treats as liquid gold isn't good enough for a spoon and let's see what happens. Happy wife, happy life.
Needless to say my wife is very happy with it. I am happy that my wife is happy. More importantly, my wife has the tool she needs to feed me. Life is good. Might make some of these large spatulas for family for Christmas. I have a lot of scrap cherry and this would be a good use for it.
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