Excellent video. You should see the whole film though.
It's a different blade being used for the spoon bowl and it's quite rigid. The long handle allows him a massive amount of leverage and you'll notice he holds the wood in such a way that he can use two hands, usually using one as a fulcrum.
Ion Constantin is famous within the woodcraft fraternity. He's a master craftsman and many british woodcraft people travel to Romania (and other eastern european countries) to learn the old ways of working wood before they are completely replaced by modern technologies and the old folks have died off.
He works that fast simply because he has been doing it for many many years, his knives are razor sharp and he's using predominantly soft birch wood which surrounds his farm.
Anybody going over there and showing a genuine interest in what these rural folks make are usually welcomed with open arms. People will willingly show you how they make stuff, because their young people don't want to know. Most young people in rural eastern europe are just interested in pop music, fashion and getting a good job in the big city. The old folk feel abandoned from a rural skills point of view and government and local aurhorities are not promoting rural skills like they are now doing in this country.
If it goes the same way as many other trends, and these former communist countries seem to be about 30 years behind us in many aspects, by the time they get round to trying to protect their rural heritage, all the practitioners will have dies and left nobody knowing how to make stuff the old way. So when woodcrafters from Britain turn up, and once the old folks see we are already in the trade so to speak, they happily pass on their techniques so at least they will be preserved for the future.
This is a subject very close to my heart.
Eric
How close to his knees does he get?. I like it when he is carving towards himself, the hand holding the spoon moves down with the knife.
