Butter Knives and Spatulas

Why start here

Salomon’s sloyd started students with the knife and simple, useful objects ¹, and Jögge Sundqvist’s Slöjd in Wood opens with a butter knife for the same reason ². It needs only the sloyd knife, practices four or five grips, takes an evening, and gets used every day.

Wood

Fine-grained, non-toxic hardwoods that carve well green: birch, maple, cherry, alder, apple, lilac, or juniper. Avoid open-grained oak and ash for thin blades (they splinter), and avoid toxic woods such as yew. Pick a straight piece without knots, cut fresh.

Layout

1. Rive a billet about 25 × 40 × 200 mm (1 × 1.5 × 8 in) with a hatchet or knife and baton. Riving keeps the grain straight down the length.
2. Remove the pith.
3. Grain runs along the length. A butter knife’s blade is thin; short grain across it would snap.
4. Draw the outline on the wide face: a blade about 25 mm wide and 90-100 mm long, a handle you can grip comfortably. Some carvers draw the side profile too, with the blade thinning toward the tip.

Carving sequence

Using the grips from The Sloyd Knife and Knife Grips ³:

1. Rough the outline with forehand cuts and reinforced forehand cuts, working downhill with the grain.
2. Shape the shoulders where blade meets handle with thumb-push cuts, stopping each cut cleanly. Make small stop cuts across the grain first so the waste breaks off where you want.
3. Thin the blade with long chest-lever or reinforced cuts, leaving it thicker at the spine and thinning toward the edge and tip - about 3 mm at the edge, thicker where it meets the handle.
4. Round the handle with pull strokes, taking the corners off like square → octagon → round.
5. Chamfer every edge lightly so nothing is sharp or fragile.

Dry, then finish

Green wood fuzzes as it dries. Let the piece dry for a few days, away from direct heat - small, thin work dries fast and rarely cracks. Then make the finishing cuts with a freshly stropped knife: long, clean, overlapping facets that shine. Sundqvist’s work is finished straight from the knife, faceted and alive, not sanded ².

Finish

A drying oil that’s food-safe once cured: raw linseed oil, walnut oil, or tung oil. Wipe on, leave 15 minutes, wipe off completely, let cure, repeat once or twice. Oily rags can self-heat and ignite: lay them flat to dry or soak them in water (see the Traditional Paints and Finishes lesson on oily rags). A spatula for cooking can be left unfinished.

Variations: a spatula is the same project with a wider, flatter blade and a straight edge for scraping a pan; a spreader with a slight crank introduces carving to a curve.

What to take from this

The butter knife is the classic first project because it needs only a knife and a few grips and ends in something useful. Rive straight-grained birch, maple, or cherry with the grain running the length, rough with forehand and reinforced cuts, shape shoulders with stop cuts and thumb pushes, thin the blade, dry it, then finish with clean faceted cuts and a food-safe drying oil.