The first spoons Alex Davidson carved were flawless: the wood didn’t have any blemishes; the handles were perfectly straight.

The problem was that people were too intimidated to use them.

“Now I leave all the quirks and imperfections,” said the 45-year-old carpentry enthusiast. “Some of my spoons have a curve in the handle, you can feel tool marks in some of them. They are not perfectly round. I made them imperfect so people will want to pick them up and use them. I don’t want to find them gathering dust in a drawer.”

He started making them as a hobby about ten years ago. At first, he gave away most of them and then last year, he won a prize in the Bermudian magazine’s Made in Bermuda competition.

The acknowledgement wasn’t enough to make his a household name, but it has kept him busy.

“I really don’t remember why I started,” he said.

“I make furniture and I love to cook. I try not to advertise and fly under the radar to keep the demand down.”

Mr Davidson’s day job in environmental protection keeps him busy with marine cleanups along the shoreline.

It’s a prime spot for finding the scrap wood he relies on to make his spoons.

“The wood I use would otherwise be burnt or sent to the dump,” he said.

“It is a form of recycling. I am making something useful out of it. Hopefully, it will end up in the corner of the kitchen and get used and picked up and felt every day.

“Hopefully, in 50 or 100 years there will be some of these still kicking around. It might be a bit of teak or mahogany from a boat wreck.

“I made one wooden spoon from a little scrap of cedar I found. It was full of ancient worm holes and was probably from a cedar forest submerged off the South Shore, 7,000 years ago.”

Spice wood, which is commonly used to make fish pots, is his favourite “because it is so dense”, he said.

He makes a lot of the tools he uses for carving out of his metal workshop.

“I haven’t bought any of the tools I use to make the spoons,” he said.

“I make a spokeshave and scrapers. The tool-making side of things can involve a lot of machine work on a lathe and a milling machine.

“That can be time-consuming.

“The spoon itself usually only takes me about half-an-hour to make.”

If the spoons crack or warp after purchase, he’ll replace them free-of-charge, or repair them.

The real challenge is listening to the wood.

“You can’t have a plan,” he said.

“You know you want a spoon, and you want it to be a certain size or shape and the materials won’t conform to what you want to do.

You have to work with the material. It will fight you. Some days it will go with you, but most of the time it is fighting you. The wood dictates the final form. You have to clear your mind and let the shape come out, so to speak.”

Prices range from $30 to $250. Buy them at gift and design store & Partners: 46 Par-la-Ville Road, Hamilton.