Bear Claw Salad Servers

Bear Claw Salad Servers

My problem here was Karen has been asking me for some time to make her a set of wood salad hands. 

However until recently I did not have a decent bandsaw. Once I had solved that problem and purchased one I was able to tackle the challenge.

Below follows how I proceeded and the results of my efforts……

I have already turned a nice tulip wood salad bowl but since then she has wanted a set of salad hands to use with it.

My wife is an animal lover and I thought I would do something different to the common salad servers made in the shape of hands.

I did some searching on Pinterest and discovered some unusual animal claw shaped salad servers.

I decided those were the the ones I thought might appeal to her the best.

On a recent visit to Yandells I purchased a gash piece of Oak from one of their odd bins for 0.20p

Construction of Bear Claw Salad Servers

As you can see from the image this was an off cut which I measured into two equal lengths of 6 inches long by 3.5 inches wide.

My next task was to mark out and drill three holes to form the bottom of each claw indent.

I then moved to my Charnwood Bandsaw .

I very carefully cut out the finger sections followed by rounding off the end of the palm section.

Once I had the basic shape I went to my belt sander to shape the tips of the claws

Next came sanding the profile of the paws.

The original was a flat piece of wood. It needed to have a circular  impression in the palm and then the fingers needed to be gently curved.

If you take a look at the profile picture you will see what I mean.

Once I was happy with its shape it was then a case of sanding and applying a finish.

Tip

I found it easier to put my axminster tools drill chuck in the lathe with a sanding bowl attachment to shape the profile

As you can see from the image, with the lathe turning it is much easier to work the wood around the sanding disk than trying to use a drill free hand.

This particular wooden salad claws set was finished with 600 grit and then sanding sealer was applied. They then received several coats of melamine lacquer before a final buff with beeswax.

Wood salad claws

From the request for a set of wood salad hands to these Bear Claw Salad Servers proved to be an interesting journey for me.

Whilst not strictly a wood turning project it was good practice with my new bandsaw and again proved to me how versatile my axminster tools lathe can be. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you found anything here useful or interesting please share with others or comment below.

Regards

Steve

Oh, and just for fun I put this Doodly video on YouTube…