Thread: Horn scales and pressed horn scales

It has been discussed perhaps before but there is some confusion as to horn scales which are pieces of cow horn shaped and polished as a scale and PRESSED horn scales that are horn scales heated up and placed in a die with designs, etc.
Mr Jim Taylor a well know knife maker wrote the following article for the Oregon Knife Club publication. Perhaps some have not seen it before, I had not. The whole article is very interesting but the description of pressing horn is about half way through the article.
Horns, Bones, Tusks, Antlers and Hooves
This article made it a lot clearer to me as to how scales were made. It is also amazing as to the pure volume of horn that was used in England at that time.

I found this while doing a Google search for pressed horn scales. The article is a fascinating read.

Great article, I missed it first time around.

Jim Taylor's article is certainly good with a lot of great info, but it leans heavily on Wilmot Taylors's excellent book, now long out of print. Taylor's book (The Sheffield Horn Industry) came out in 1927, so the trade had all but ceased by then and with reference to horn pressing, a lot of the information was anecdotal, gained from interviewing old practitioners of the art and listening to their reminiscences. Often, as was the case with so many things at that time, it was an art that was handed down from father to son, so the verbal knowledge passed on and held by individuals was often great and very comprehensive. If only most of them were able to write - and had time to write, how much more we might know!

It is called an "inbred culture" in the book, but it was far from that, being practiced all over the continent. In fact it was an offshoot of an even earlier world-wide process - turning horn into containers and drinking vessels by fusing it along its seams, which took great knowledge of its thermoplastic nature and how to exploit it. From there it was adopted by jewellers and diverse other trades to make all manner of self contained lightweight boxes for trinkets, powders, snuff, etc, and before long pins (pique) and metal ornamentation were hot-pressed into its surface. Medallions were made from it, and no end of buttons - all this before hafting and razor scale pressing. It was already an established technique by then.

As most old timers know, it has been touched on here many, many times before, and with regard to pressed horn scales in much greater depth than the article linked to. for instance:

here

here

here

here

here

I could link to many other examples, but some have false inf and in any case, once you know the basics there isn't much else to say about the mater. Gets a bit 'same-ish' as I am sure you will agree if you manage to plough through all the above links.