Thread: What are you working on?

You might try soaking them in 30% peroxide, then wipe down with mineral oil, when done and dry.
The mineral oil will take the dry, brittleness, out of the bone, and give it new life.

You can use the drug store variety of peroxide as well, you will just have to soak them foe several days. I have have vintage bone scales that someone had coated with some sort of clear coating. It was very thin and a light sanding with 1K grit wet removed it.

Beauty Supply houses sell a pretty powerful hydrogen peroxide that works in minutes, but household hydrogen peroxide can be used but it takes far longer.

I'd give that a go and see what happens.

You could try some light sanding. I’ve removed stains from both bone and ivory by sanding.

I spent the afternoon refreshing the Lakeside Cutlery and the Shumate. Looking at them through a loupe I decided to start with the Norton 4k and then advance to the 8k, the hard Arkansas, and finish with the translucent Arkansas stropping between each stone progression. Test shave tonight on Grampa's Lakeside was a super treat. No nicks, cuts, razor burn or tugging. I wish "Pa" was alive to take his old razor for a spin.

Originally Posted by jmabuse

The uncleanable scales.
....
These are the bone scales from that little French faux frameback
....
But I can't get the scales clean. The sodium percarbonate didn't take out the gray smudge
.....

Do you know what the smudge is?
If it is related to iron and rust...
Bar Keepers Friend® Cleanser & Polish might help.
It has a small amount of oxalic acid that can bleach out iron.
Oxalic acid is used by woodworkers to bleach some oak of the natural iron stain.

My gut is to oil or seal then polish and enjoy the reality that
natural materials have character.

What's your guys favorite method for splitting horn blanks? I have 4 blanks, 3/8 thick, 6in long and 1.5 in wide iirc. I should be able to get 16 scales if I see this right and don't screw up. I'm thinking band saw if it fits.ir hand saw.

Once you allow for kerf you are only going to be able to split those once. My preferred method on pieces of that size horn or hard wood is a bandsaw. There are those amongst us that have the skill to split those with a hand saw, I do not happen to be one of those people.

While I've never attempted what you want to achieve/ Like Rez said, a band saw is going to have the least kerf so the less loss. Hand saws have a much wider kerf.

The problem I envision is keeping the blanks square to the fence and not having any wobble. You don't have a lot of play as the scales are .375 and I'd figure that the kerf is going to be .0625 so that leaves you with .15625 thick scales (which is 5/32nds/before sanding down to 1/8").

I hope you get the results that you are looking for.

Shaun I'm only going to split the scale once, you are correct, split the 3/8 in half then the width in half so 4 blanks split 4 ways should yield 16 scales. If I don't screw up.