After many years of looking for compact, light and capable trail spoon, I think this one is it..
NOTE-While this IS a MYOG project,there are so many folks over the years posting here in gear looking for decent spoons, I posted it here on the general gear thread.I am also under no illusions that I have invented the wheel here,its just I have never seen a version that worked this well or was as easy to make and as cheap and available.
My requirements for a trail spoon are –
Durable plastic that would not scratch pots, has a good sized bowl ,light, easy to clean and has a decent mouth feel. It needed to be no longer than 4" folded or taken down and at keast 7" long when extended. It also needed to be sturdy enough to use when fully deployed and while I was at it, cheap, too..;)
Over the last few years a compact plastic take down spoon I generally liked.was the MSR folding spoon . It was light at 10 grams.inexpensive at about $4 and had proper length folded and extended. But, it had several problems.
It has lots of nooks and crannies in the spoon stem and handle that make it hard to keep clean.
The bowl was too small (about teaspoon sized) and the handlep locking mechanism was a bit wobbly. Foods also stained the grey bowl plastic badly- especially coffee.
So, I continued to search for a better design. One solid spoon I had used over the years was the Coghlan Acetal (Delrin?)spoons They cost a princely $.57 at Walmart and work well. They are slightly textured, so dont have a perfect mouth feel, but the material food is resistant to melting and breakage and does not stain easily. The bowl is also big enough to make eating stuff like short noodles actually dooable.
So,I began thinking of cutting down a Coghlans spoon and making a slip on takedown handle extension as an alternative to the MSR. I needed tubing material that was flexible enough to slip over the spoon stem and yet rigid enough to make a solid unit when assembled.After months of buying tubing samples from the hardware store, nothing really worked.
Then, one day in response to an MYOG thread here. some one mentioned in an offhand way that most plastics are in fact thermo plastics and can be reformed with heat. ,which gave me an idea.I searched through my pen drawer at my desk and came up with a few White polyethene inkpen barrels found on Cheap BIC, Papermates etc..I cut down the spoon stem to the apropriate length and then sanded the sides and end of the stem to fit inside the pen barrel . I then trimmed the poly pen barrel to length and heated the end up by propping it inside a nonstick skillet on medium high – just over 300 degrees . Once the barrel end softened, I jammed it over the stem of the Spoon. It was a SNUG fit and it took a bit of pressure to get it on, but the plastic firmed nicely and did not crack.
Once cool, the handle and spoon came apart with a tug and slipped back together very securely. Because the handle can be reheated and pinched a bit, if the handle gets loose over time, it can be " tweaked" back to tight again by heating and pinching it a bit.Mine has been in use for about 6 months now and is still nice and tight..Poly sliding on nylon tends to be self lubricating,so it will likely be a snug for a good while. The smooth contours of the spoon and hollow extension shaft also make it a lot easier to keep clean on the trail than folding designs.
The spoon is 4" taken down and about 7.5" assembled . One could always make longer version for eating out of Mountain House bags,etc. I also know that not everyone likes the mouth feel of the Acetal spoons,so I am going to also look into a version made from a Wendy's Chilli spoon,
which I also have liked using over the years and is dead smooth.
