Scrimshaw and Heelball

[Tengu]

(Which is alliterative but never mind.)

How is the black bits done?

I assume something like heelball (a combination of wax (beeswax presumably) and lampblack.)

Where would I get this? Or recipe for making?

Has anyone any I can trade for?

Lampblack is soot, yes? Say, the oily stuff you get if you upend something flameproof over a candle??

I also have black brass rubbing wax.

 

[Robson Valley]

Lamp Black is the original pigment, readily available on the whaling ships of long ago.
I'll guess that chimneys would provide an endless supply.
Some contemporary artists are using many colors of artist's oil paints.
In any case, wipe it on and rub off the excess with a cotton cloth.

Kolrosing is a similar Scandanavian art form where I've read that even powdered cinnamon can be rubbed into the cuttings.

 

[Toddy]

Do you mean heelball or coad ?
Coad, the shoemaker's wax, wasn't dyed with lampblack, but it took it's colour from the pitch resin used in making it. Heelball is just shoe polish. Just use some Cherry Blossom Black.

If you want to make the coad though….this site is very good indeed
http://aands.org/raisedheels/Techniques/coad.php

M

 

[Tengu]

So essentialy you are looking at the soot made by burning animal fat?

(Though of course spermacetti is very different to lard or tallow...)

Im not sure I have any oil paint; would acrylic do?

 

[Toddy]

You don't need to burn animal fat. Lampblack is just carbon. You can make it just by burning some meths with a metal pot above the flame. The soot collects on the base. Scrape it off, and that's lampblack.

Oil lamps were the obvious source when such lamps were commonplace, and were generally fueled by whale or fish oil. The old mutton fat dips gave off the same black oily soot.

It's simply the result of incomplete combustion of something waxy, oily or tarry.

M

 

[Tengu]

Carbon carbon or carbon with an oily residue?

I have chinese ink sticks too, come to think of it.

And what proportion lampblack to beeswax?

 

[Toddy]

Lampblack is oily carbon.
Carbon can be anything from graphite to diamond to burnt sugar.
Personally I wouldn't use any of those for heelball or coad though.

M

 

[Hibrion]

If you want to give skrimshaw a try, a bit of scrap corian, something sharp and some standard acrylic paint will give you a taste for it. You can try using more traditional materials then.

 

[Robson Valley]

Lamp Black was the original pigment used for scrimshaw. Just greasy, oily soot of incomplete combustion.
make lots of it on the underside of the cast iron dishes for apple wood, inside my 3 smoker BBQ's.
Really difficult to wash off when I get messed up, as usual.