Just curious - bone carving?

[Robert Cahill]

I received a woodcarving sales magazine in the mail yesterday and they had a book on bone carving. I was curious if anyone carves bone and if they had any pictures. I'm just sort of curious and doubt if I would try it.

Robert

[Thor]

Hi Robert,

I took a little workshop on carving bone once, and tried a little of it related to Medieval use of bones. The bones that they used in the class were ones they had bought in a pet store that were clean and bleached. That kind of started you off easily. They used knives and mostly handmade tools that made patterns in the bone like a circle with a dot in the middle for spinning in the bone to make a round pattern. It isn't too hard to carve, and it gets great detail in it. I hope to carve some more to use as buttons. That will give you an idea of how small you can carve.
Carving a tauga nut is very similar in appearance if you can't get bones you like.
Thor

[Kenny_S]

Soak the bone in water will help. well at least it does with deer antlers.

[Dennis Taylor]

I have turned bone on a wood lathe, and if you soak it in water with just a little bleach in the water, it will clean it, I used bone from the butcher shop, and it turned well, but smells like hair burning!!!...not pleasent(sp) but made a nice dart set!..Dennis

[Claude]

I used a couple of bones from round steaks many years ago - boiled them and scaped off the cartilage and then then carved it to look like a turks head knot - used it for a Boy Scout neckerchief. Boiling the bone seemed to make to harder than the "raw" bone - had to use a dremel on it...or maybe that was just my dull knife Smile

Claude

[Thomp]

Like Thor said it stinks when using power tools on it,
i have made several sward handles from hip and knee bones and sections of leg bones of calves, its best fresh,
i Barry them in an ant pile and let the ants do the cleaning. best if you can put it under a metal milk crate that's weighted heavily, a trick i learned from cleaning sea shells in Guam,
if you can keep the dogs from digging it out of the ant pile you put it in to clean it out.
the bone will be slick as a whistle in 2 weeks, then it can still crack on you as it dries out the rest of the way

i been told to put them in a microwave set on low for 1 minuet at a time, will help in drying, but im not that patient the ground will suck out the moisture slowly while the ants do their thing.
but cooking them causes fine cracks in the bone. great if that's what your going for,

and doing scrimshaw is fun as well.

[Irish]

Robert, thank you for posting this thread! I also have been wanting to try bone carving especially as an accent to walking sticks.

I asked a buddy of mine who is a bow hunter if I could have a set of antlers. The photos show you what he found for me. It's from a natural death and you can see where it's been on the ground for a while. The squirrels had already gotten to one of the antlers.

Now, my problem here is not that I don't have antlers to carve, I do! But the skull itself is so beautiful with all of the dark color tones that I just can't bare to cut it apart until I have done a painting of it ...
Rock and an hard place here.

Susan

[Paul_Guraedy]

Bone carvers: What do you do about the "pithy" center in the bones? I was told that this problem is why they use moose antlers for carving.

Susan, I can see why you are fond of the skull. My wife and I have a rams skull that we found in the New Mexico desert (about 39 years ago) and it has been a fixture in our living rooms (moved around a lot) ever since.

The skull you have is referred to, here in the Ozarks, as a European mount (just the skull and horns). That tall "8 point" would have made a nice mount for some hunter.

I have asked the hunters on my place to be on the lookout for one like this for the house we are building. I like them much better than the traditional full flesh mount.

Sure hope you will post copies of your painting of the skull. Brings to mind visions of an eastern Georgia O'Keefe!

[Irish]

Paul, Did you do anything special to your Ram's skull or did you just leave it alone.

I am afraid to even wash mine as I am afriad that the wonderful coloring will be lost.

It is a prize, isn't it.

Susan

[Paul_Guraedy]

Susan, I wanted to improve on Mother Nature by bleaching the bone and touching up the horns. My wife said, "I found it. I like it like it is. Don't touch it!"

Best advice (well, orders) I ever received. It has been on display in our living rooms since "early marriage" and will soon move to its 13th (and last for us) location in our new home.

We just brought it in from where it was (and had been for some while) hanging on a fence in the desert.