I’ve been working on some utensil designs, and the first thing that I made is a wooden spatula. The spatula itself is curvy and round, which is contrary to a lot of spatulas that I’ve seen made on a CNC. They generally tend to be flat shapes, simply because those are much easier to design and cut out. It also takes a lot of time to carve the curved surfaces.

I enjoy working with epoxy, but I want to move towards pure wood designs in order to avoid the ecological effects of using a plastic. I still will be using epoxy – I think it is incredibly beautiful and allows some shapes and colors that I couldn’t do otherwise.

Currently I made directions and files available for sale so other people can replicate this project on their CNC machine. You can purchase it on my website: Spatula with Wood Inlay for CNC or over on Etsy – Spatula for CNC on Etsy.

I may have a few available for sale, but I’m not sure what to price them for. They take a few days to make, but most of the time is unattended machining or waiting for the glue to dry. I’ve seen boutique spoons and flat spatulas for sale in our local shops going for $50, which seems surprisingly high. I’d hope that the quality of mine is better, and that the wood inlay would make it more unique. Shipping may also be cost prohibitive, so I’m thinking of packaging it together with a spoon. Let me know if you have any ideas on how much they should go for!

I made quite a few spatulas earlier as Christmas presents. Most were basic without any inlays, but on a few I did manage to get some good engravings, and backfilled them with epoxy. This was easier than doing the wood inlay..which was my ultimate goal, but I had to do a lot of testing and experiments to get it right. I’ll save those details for another post!

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