A few years ago at the Northeast Squeeze-In I saw an example of Canadian spoons, two spoons made from a single piece of wood, joined at the ends of their handles. When struck against a hand or knee the spoons would slap together, making a hollow percussion sound.
I experimented a little and made four pair of wooden spoons, each one different from the others. I took them to a subsequent squeeze-in. They were received well. As soon as people learned that I had made them myself, they asked about buying them. Two of the four pair went home with new owners.
I came home and started making some more. I was not too happy with my original design, based on the Canadian examples I had seen, so I simplified and streamlined the design. The result was a stronger yet flexible and responsive instrument. My spoons don't resemble others which are made on the same principle. One fellow who visited my shop saw them and thought they were loom shuttles.
I have two sizes of the one-piece spoons. One is nine inches long by about an inch wide, depending on how the wood cuts. The other is 12 inches long and about two inches wide, and makes a much louder sound. Both sizes are a little less than two inches thick, depending on the actual thickness of the 8/4 hardwood from which they are made.
I also make some sticks that have pads of wood which strike against each other, rather than hollow spoons. Most of them are nine inches long by an inch wide but only three-quarters of an inch thick. A piece of wood which will yield one pair of my nine-inch spoons will yield two pair of these.
For a deeper and more hollow sound, I make separate spoons. They somewhat resemble wooden kitchen spoons, but there are some features which give them a good striking action when they are held together in one hand.
In making these spoons, I learned how to produce a sharp percussion sound, instead of a slapping sound. Each pair has to be tuned by ear to get the desired sound. They also have somewhat of a musical pitch, but I don't attempt to tune it.
The spoons are made from locally-available hardwoods, maple, cherry and mahogany. I make some of my sticks from black walnut, but the dust is so obnoxious that I don't want to hollow spoons from it. To my ear, the cherry and mahogany sound better than the maple.
It takes some decent power tools to make these spoons. I use a drill press, saber saw, band saw, a flexible shaft machine and a small belt sander. After a pair is roughed out with the power tools, it takes a lot of hand sanding to bring them to final shape and smoothness. I use a rub-on oil finish, usually two coats with a steel wool rub between them.
Even with the power tools, it takes a lot of time to make these spoons.
My current pricing scheme is this: nine-inch spoons are $20, twelve-inch spoons are $40, nine-inch sticks are $6, and the two-piece spoon sets vary on up to $50, depending on size and the amount of hollowing involved.
I don't do mailorder, nor do I give dealer discounts. Anyone who wants to purchase these instruments must see me in person at a musical event or craft show.--Jim Allen