I thought there might be something like this scoop out there already but I came up empty when I did an on-line search. Of course sometimes it's a matter of finding that elusive exact-right search term and then all of a sudden they are everywhere. If that term exists for this then I didn't stumble upon it so I'll just go and assume it's too specific for any company to produce. Besides, it's always more satisfying to make something [believed to be] unique than just a custom version of some item hanging in a blister pack at London Drugs for $8.95.

I made a few concept sketches of handle-less versions of the scoop but they would have been a bit awkward to use as compared to a handled version, so after confirming that the somewhat ungainly thing could be stored in the appropriate utensil drawer, I settled on using a handle.

After deciding on the handled version of the scoop, I needed to figure out whether it was practical to use and what the best geometry would be.

I employed a well-used a scrap of 1/8" plywood cut to an appropriate shape and equipped with a crudely-wound stiff wire that I could bend to set the angle of the handle.

Then I tried out the "angle" prototype on a candidate pot. There needed to be enough room for hands and to lift out the scoop without the contents falling off. The angled approach seemed the best choice.

I didn't have a very detailed plan for the scoop and I wanted to check how it would look once it had a third dimension. That meant another prototype, this one hopefully closer to the final design.

I glued a couple pieces of construction 2x4 together to get a wide-enough piece with the correct grain direction and started to cut it up.

I set up the drill press to drill the handle hole to match the angle of the held-on-with-a-wire prototype, which was 10° backwards and 30° to the side.

With a 1/2"-diameter dowel for a handle stuck into the scoop blank, it looked like this.

I wanted to check the profile of the scoop so it needed to be hollowed. That was mostly done with this scorp which was perfect for cutting strips out of the soft spruce.

After some more hollowing followed by sanding, the scoop looked reasonable. The handle section could use more work but it didn't seem important to go any further with this prototype.

OK then - on with the real thing.

I decided to go with maple for the scoop so I grabbed a couple pieces that were wide enough for the scoop and long enough for the handle.

I did the standard cut-to-size things on the scoop section;

The "10° back and 30° over" angle for the handle hole was drilled with a rather crude makeshift setup on the drill press as can be verified here.

Once again I started with the scorp for hollowing.

However a few minutes of that showed that it was going to be pretty tough sledding - maple being rather harder than the spruce of the prototype.

So then it was back to the drill press, this time set up for milling with a 3/8" router bit. The scoop was held in the cross vise, allowing me to move it in nice X and Y directions under the bit.

The drill press milling operation left the cut-out section stepped from thin near the front to thicker near the back. This of course left a very irregular surface so it was smoothed using a rotary rasp.

After some more rotary shaping with finer and smaller bits, the surfaces were sanded by hand to remove any remaining scratch marks.

I decided the best handle-attachment approach was to have a handle flange sitting flat on the scoop. For that I needed a flat section at the hole angle - something that would have been easier to do when I drilled the hole.

But instead I set up the drill press again using a slightly less jury-rigged angle setting to first align the hole with the drill axis. Here I have a rod in the drill press that goes straight into the hole to verify alignment.

Then with the alignment theoretically correct, I swapped the rod for a bit and drilled a flat area.

Then it was on to fabricating the handle. It was a pretty simple turning of the original square maple piece to have a 1/2" end to fit into the hole, a flange to sit against the scoop and a slightly shaped length.

In this shot the end is already turned to size and I'm finishing the rounding off of the square profile.

In this shot I'm finishing up the sanding of the surface.

The handle was left a bit long and after it is off the lathe I'll remove those square corners and round off the top end of the handle using the belt sander.

And that's it for the handle.

Next was gluing the handle into the scoop. I had done a bit more shaping of the scoop neck to expose the flat area that had been drilled.

And finally the neck of the scoop was blended into the handle around the glue joint. I followed this rotary-tool work with hand sanding to smooth everything off.

And that was it for the woodworking.

I used my standard approach of three coats of Fast-Dry Polyurethane for the finish. In this shot the first coat is going on with a foam brush.

After the scoop finish was dry, I sanded with #0000 steel wool and recoated. Then when dry again, repeated for the third coat.

And that was it. I didn't bother adding initials or year since this is kind of a minor piece.

The scoop doesn't actually balance on the base but a bit of masking tape on the bottom is enough to enable this "standing" photo.