Laser Cut Kitchen Shovel From Firewood

I purchased some new equipment for my home workshop and decided to make a wooden kitchen shovel as a test. And it turned into pretty fun project.

• piece of firewood
• table saw
• 10W "Endurance" laser engraver (CO2 laser or CNC may work even better)
• belt sander
• sandpaper
• food-grade mineral oil

I used a piece of oak for the fireplace and sawed it into planks with a table saw. I didn't measure the thickness the first time, so I got something like 7.5mm. I later discovered that firewood is probably not the best material to use, as it can be damaged and cracked. But that was okay for a first try.

This was easily done with a belt sander. The surface is now smooth and even.

In fact, I was very surprised that my 10W laser could cut through 7.5 mm of wood! Yes, it was really slow, 35mm/min, and took 5 passes. But it did it! So I made a sketch and sent a shovel to cut.

To make the kitchen shovel more interesting, I googled and added some texture to it.

Next I chamfered and smoothed the surface some more with 200 grit sandpaper.

I was very happy with the result so I decided to make a gift from it and added some text on back side.

To protect the wood I used IKEA SKYDD food grade mineral oil, coated the surface with it and let it dry. The oil gave the engraving more contrast, boost wood texture and made the surface slightly shinier.

It is so cool and enjoyable to make something from nothing :)

Inspired with success I decided to made more kitchen shovels for my family. So I used the same approach, prepared wood planks, textures, text etc.

Here you can download SVG file with the sketches for all shovel variants I made.

This time it was much faster as I cut wood in 5-6 mm planks and laser cut them easily on 100-150mm/min and 5 passes.

I wish you inspiration and good luck! I hope you enjoy working with wood just as much, especially when you have a CPU-controlled laser as an assistant ;)