Spoon Rest

I love kitchen gadgets, so when I found this pattern for a wooden spoon rest on the Scroll Saw Workshop blog, I knew that I could make it using my Proxxon micro tools. I started with a length of bubinga. The bubinga tree grows in equatorial Africa, reaching heights up to 150 feet with three to six foot diameter trunks. It is denser that any domestic woods—about twice as hard as white oak.

I began this project by adapting the pattern to meet my own needs and for use with a table saw rather than a scroll saw.

Original	Adaptation

You can see that I shortened the spoon rest from five to three slots and redesigned the supports. I also merged two spoon rest patterns, since using the Proxxon Table Saw FET required different cutting techniques than those used with a scroll saw.

The first difference is how to achieve the grooves where the utensils rest. With a scroll saw you simply cut out the pattern outline. You can see from my adaptation that a vertical cut through the center of the pattern will result is two spoon rests. But, I still needed to cut the grooves, and a table saw only cuts straight lines. I decided to cut the holes with a hole saw drill bit. You can see the holes here as I get ready to cut the spoon rest on the table saw.

After the two bottom of each spoon rest was cut, I positioned the wood in the saw to cut the two halves.

To cut the notches, I adjusted the blade height to make a half inch cut. The wood was positioned with the bottom on the spoon rest on the bed of the saw. The first cut was made in the center of the notch, then a series of parallel cuts made to the right and the left, very close together. The end result was a notch 1/2" deep on the bottom of the spoon rest. (Sorry, no photo. I didn't have enough hands to hold the wood and snap the pic, and didn't have a photo buddy. BTW—if I'm the photographer, which is most of the time, the saw is in the OFF position. I love my fingers and want to keep all of them :) )

When all the cuts were made, it was time for finish sanding using my Delta sander. This wood is so nice to work with, it required minimal sanding.

To sand the grooves on the spoon rest, I devised my own version of a drum sander. I used E6000 adhesive to adhere a piece of sandpaper to a 3/4" dowel rod, which I mounted in my Proxxon Micro Woodturning Lathe.

Here are the pieces cut, sanded, and ready for assembly. You could glue the supports onto the spoon rest for a permanent kitchen piece, or you could leave them separate and assemble on an as-needed basis. Either way this makes a lovely addition to any kitchen.