Thread: Another way to skin the cat.(making horn scales)

At the moment I don't have any restore/rescale projects that I'm working on but this is something that I've been thinking about a lot recently.

Usually when making scales out of horn(and other materials), you trace your scale shape on a blank and saw them out, we all know that horn is bendable/moldable when you warm it up.

What I've been thinking is that instead of tracing the curves on the slab and sawing out the nearly finished design, you could start out with making the scales straight with a taper towards the pivot end, sand and finish, then heat them up in hot water and bend them around a block with the desired curve, if that makes sense.

It would require some extra effort but I would imagine that you'd save a lot of material in the long run and that it would be easier to both saw out and sand the scales

If anyone's got any thoughts about this, I'd like to hear them.

Baxxer, that is an excellent question, and it should be looked into. I myself just picked up some horn, and before I start whittling it away, I look forward to anybody else who might have experience in this voicing opinions. If nobody else has tried it, I suppose I will have to do it, but it wont be for a while, as I am too busy to get to the workshop at this exact moment.

A good thought,but the material saved is miniscule,also your dealing with a natural material.I have heat bent Ivory in the past,the tendancy is it wants to go back to the way it was,maybe horn is differant,Keep us posted.

I tried to save some horn scales from an old razor I have yet to finish. You can straighten them with water soak and then clamp in position until dry. They did bend back out of shape but not as bad as they were. Mind you this bending was through the thin direction. Bending the other might be more chore than it's worth but who knows, you may be on to something. I have some streaked horn I am going to cut tomorrow I got from Masecraft. It has already warped sitting in a drawer. Hopefully it will not be to much of a pain to pin it and I hope I don't have to add a 3rd pin to keep it off the tang. I am not even going to try to reshape it. I also noticed it bends when you work it. Say you sand it and warm it up, it might tweak some. Fun Stuff. I was going to google up "stabilizing horn" and see if it could be after reshaping. Let us know how yours works out. I have a small pile of horn to use up soon.

Okay so I have been looking into this as I am in the process of making some streaked horn scales for this little razor I just spent a week carefully sanding. I found this link >> http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...s-process.html There is a lot of info here that might answer some of your questions about shaping horn.

I have already ruff cut my scales from a warped blank. Yes I have plenty of pictures. I should be finishing it this week and I am thinking it would be better to start a new thread so as not to steal this one. If there is already a "how to" link for doing this then mine will be a "how I did it" :<0) I have a few razors to put horn on and already messed with restoring some old scales, so I plan on including that in my experiences with horn.

Thanks for the input, everyone.

Pups and Magpie, remember to send me a link if you try it out, I wouldn't wan't to miss it.