Thread: Made some scales

Below is a Dovo with some Buffalo Horn scales that I crafted. I really like the look. The scales are mainly black as I thought that would look good with the gold on the blade.

Nice work. Only comment is do not put pins so close to ends. Too much stress and chance of failure.

Agree with above. Nice job on the scales but you need to put pins father in. I had an issue of not getting pins the same distance from each end. You did a fine job. Something to be proud of and yes, the black looks good with the gold! I recommend you look at a lot of pics of razors and you will se what we are talking about.

That is great input - thanks!

Originally Posted by Pete123

That is great input - thanks!

Nice shine on them! Looking good.

Adam


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working on some horn scales as well just need more free time, I hope they come out as good as these. good work

I really like the natural materials for scales. Horn is very beautiful. I can see why you chose horn and the contrast with the gold is quite nice.

Nice job, looks very nice with that contrast.

Originally Posted by Christian1

working on some horn scales as well just need more free time, I hope they come out as good as these. good work

You can get the shine, it just takes a lot of elbow grease. I'm hoping to discover an easier way - maybe one of the veterans know one. Keep in mind that I'm new at this, so I may not be sharing best practices.

Current recipe is manual sand paper based.

Start with the least grit sand paper this will get scratches and imperfections out. Keep in mind that beautiful coloring on the scales usually isn't very deep. You have to balance removing perfections with keeping coloring. This isn't an issue on black scales, though the cool ones have coloring, streaks or markings.

I then use sand paper with successively finer grit. i.e. 800, 1000, 1500, 2000, 1500, 3000, 4000, 6000, 8000. I use the finer grit only enough to remove any scratches from the previous grit. They don't start shining much until you get to 6000 and 8000.

It would be great to find a rubbing compound that will work horn. My lessons thus far are:

1. oil based rubbing compound will discolor them from what I read.
2. I've have limited success with Pre-Lim metal burnisher. It doesn't discolor them. The issue with Pre-Lim is that my dremel won't go less than 5000 RPM. The Pre-Lim dries quickly and when it does it burns the horn.

Also, make sure to take on of the mentor's comments on pin placement. I'm learning that I don't have the skill to drill holes for pinning using a free hand drill. I've ordered a little attachment that turns my Dremel into a drill press and hope for better results.

I wet sand with water and do not sand to anywhere near that high of grit. I have two buffing wheels that I use for scales only, one of those is bone only. Once you buff metal that polish will mark and stain your scales. If you only have a few wheels you should rake and clean your wheel before buffing scales. When shaping a scalper and a coarse wood file works really well. There are several threads on scale making. If you are looking for trying some different techniques you should read through a few of them.