Last weekend my wife and I were cleaning up our booth in the antique mall when she decided to take things out that weren’t selling. One of the items was a bag of silver plated spoons that had been in the booth for six months, when I mentioned I could make herb sticks with them. I remember us talking about making herb sticks from old spoons several years ago but it was one of those little projects that never got done. So, I grabbed the bag and took them home to see if I could figure out how to do it.

Making herb sticks from old silver plated spoons is not my idea as I’m sure I’ve seen it done somewhere else, I just can’t remember where I saw it. The idea is pretty simple. Take an old spoon, flatten it out and stamp words on it.

The first thing I did was stick the spoon in my bench vise and squeeze the hell out of it. It flattened the face but there was still a bubble in the middle.

I then took it over to my blacksmith vise and squeezed it again. You can see in the picture that the spoon is actually tapered to the front so simply squeezing it in the vise will never get it perfectly flat.

I brought the spoons outside and smashed them on my anvil. I’ve owned this anvil for several years hoping that one day I would start making my own hardware and tools but it hasn’t happened yet. Actually, my wife wants me to sell my blacksmithing tools but I’ve been dragging my feet for months. I really don’t want to give up my dreams of having my own blacksmith shop even though we need the money.

After I pounded the hell out of the spoon, I taped it to my bench anvil and punched words onto the face. The tape does two things. First, it holds the spoon to the anvil so I can work with both hands. Second, it acts as a guide to line up the punches so that the letters will look somewhat even. I bought the punches at Harbor Freight for about $10.00 so they are nothing fancy.

Once I punched a bunch of words onto them like, lavender, sage, thyme, basil, etc. I painted over the lettering with black paint. Then, I rubbed over the face of the spoon with steel wool to make the paint stand out inside the lettering.

After a couple hours of work, I was left with a couple dozen herb sticks. We’ll take these to an antique design show in the spring to see how they sell. I’m not sure what I’ll charge for them. Maybe $4.00 – $6.00. If they sell well, I’ll make more. If they are dogs and no one wants them, I’ve learned not to waste my time repurposing old silver plated spoons.

I posted these pictures onto my Instagram Story last weekend and a few people gave me positive feedback telling me it was a really cool idea. Hopefully, I’ll have an excuse to use my anvil a lot more and my wife won’t make me sell it.