Thread: How to work Bone?

Can anyone give me some advice in regard on how to work bone so I can sta rt making some new scales for one of My antique wedges. thanks Paul

Originally Posted by Sharp&Shiny

Can anyone give me some advice in regard on how to work bone so I can sta rt making some new scales for one of My antique wedges. thanks Paul

This is a good question! Is there any way to have a "tutorial" or "how to" section in the forums?

Would be nice to be able to make some stuff out of the bones collected after a hunt. I'm all for full usage of game collected.... That said, would you treat the bones just like wood and let them age/cure for a time before use?

Hmm, I'm pretty sure I read online a guide on bone preparation (not working with it). It was by a museum or musical instrument making person, I think, but it covered pretty well the thing, both on professional and amateur scale. I'll look for it tomorrow, but basically the idea was 'Get rid of all oil'. The train of thought was something like:

First you clean it as much as you can from the meat, then you boil it, then you boil it even more, then you leave it outside for a while (for bacteria to feast on the fat). Then he had a specific product (borax?) to soak it in, then something about bleaching it, things get fuzzy with my memory.
For faster preparation you could develop your colony of some beetles and let their larvae feast on the bones (they have to be fresh and essentially no meat on them), apparently that's what museums use as these larvae are super fast.
May be somebody else has seen this guide and can post a link here or even better add it to the library.

Could it have been this guide?

This file also seems to have good info.