Futility
William Duffield, on the Cohansey
>The idea is to be able to hold the tool with the wrist straight, and the bend bringing the working end closer to the centerline of the body. It accomplishes that.
More than that, how well it fits the fingers, how strong your grip has to be to transfer forces for typical operations (in this case, stirring the pot and dipping and pouring the soup) cannot be determined from the photo, or any number of photos. Whether it works well cannot even be determined from visual inspection of the object itself. The tuning of the shape is tactile. I do most of it at the drum sander, or with a scraper at hand, for removing small uncomfortable spots. When making right handed handles, I have a bit more difficulty figuring out whether the shape is optimum, especially if I am shaping a tool I don't use a lot with my right hand. In either case, however, I hold the tool in whatever hand it is designed for, push and pull and twist it, and then sand off some material. I repeat this process until I can't make any improvements on the comfort. Some shaping is compromise, especially with multipurpose tools. A small change might make one task it performs marginally more comfortable while making another less comfortable. I can't make it handle to fit anyone else's hand, so I make it to fit mine. Sam Maloof does the same with his rockers, and just about everyone thinks they are very comfortable. The most important thing with a handle is to stop removing material before the diameter gets so small that your finger tips meet the ball of your palm, because then your grip begins to weaken very rapidly, leading to very uncomfortable use.
The biggest problem with most of my ladles is that they tend to roll over and play dead when set down on a flat surface. I figure that's a small price to pay.
