This is an article about making some cooking utensils that are functional but do not look totally out of place in a medieval encampment.

The First set of Utensils I have been working on consists of a pot scraper, a flipper and a ladle.

These utensils have been made out of mild steel because I had some, and because plain iron is not an option.

The first step was to mark the utensils out on the sheet with a texta and then cut them out with an angle grinder, the jigsaw's metal blade was just not up to the task, the teeth wore off before it really made a scratch.

The first picture here shows the making out for the ladle and the flipper, the pot scraper had been cut out already at this point.



Whilst cutting the shapes out with an angle grinder was fairly easy, it was also not as precise as desired, plus it leaves sharp nasty edges. The following picture is the pot scraper after being roughly cut out.



So to clean up the rough cut out job the bench grinder comes into play, the following picture shows all three items after being ground into shape, at this point the bowl part of the ladle has also been dished into shape.



The function of the pot scraper may not be immediately apparent although the name is fairly descriptive, it is used to scrape burnt stew etc out of pots, this will nearly always happen when cooking on an open fire, the heat control is not as precise as a gas or electric stove and it is not uncommon to find yourself cooking in the dark when it is not the middle of summer.

The flipper is just like your standard egg flip spatula jobby, and is really handy when making bacon and eggs, whilst it may not be totally apparent in this photo it does have a slight angle bent into it to assist in distancing ones hand from the fry pan when cooking.

The ladle is just like a standard soup ladle, it is good for serving stews and soups and also doubles as a stirring implement should you not have a large wooden spoon handy.

Below is a picture that shows a close view of the dishing on the ladle. The process of dishing is good fun, it involves hitting a flat piece of metal into a depression to form a curve or bowl shape.



After this it is a case of clean up to remove the rust followed by a seasoning. More pictures of this to come.



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Article last updated 15/09/2004