Working with horn - advice needed

[moduser]

I picked up a nice big cow horn at the weekend, approx 18" long plus some black buffalo horn.

For the cow horn I'm thinking a mug or beaker (If a mug the handle would be formed by forming it as a single piece (if you see what I mean) from the top portion and 2 or three spoons from the rest. The tip should make a nice flint knapping tool.

So a couple of questions. Should the horn be processed in any way prior to carving?

If I need to bend the horn to form a handle etc, how best to soften it? Boil in water?

For the base of the mug I was think about cutting a disk of the buffolo. Any suggestions on fixing the two together (remember it will be used for food and drink so I want to be careful with glues)

How well will a horn cup handle hot liquids?

Any other advice?

Many thanks

Moduser

 

[jdlenton]

Has your cow horn still got its core or is it hollow? I believe the core can be removed by boiling for some time then it can be pulled out.

From what I’ve seen to form horn you boil until soft then use a double sided former i.e. one piece of wood either side of the horn then clamp up until cool. I've seen flat pieces of horn for inlay and bowls of spoons made this way but don’t quite understand how your handle design will works so can’t help any more than that

As for attaching your Buffalo base good old epoxy should do it but there are probable better ways I wonder how they were glued in the past some sort of animal glue maybe anyone know ?



Hope this helps a bit

James

 

[pumbaa]

I think the stuff you need to make for glueing is bone glue , not sure how to make it mind . Its pretty good stuff , it was used by the celts to glue handles on swords so should take some abuse .
Pumbaa

 

[Wayland]

The traditional method for horn cups was to cut a groove on the inside of the cup near the base and then force a flat disc of horn into it while hot. No glue required.....

 

[Eric_Methven]

If the horn still has it's core, you'll need to boil it for four or five hours. Do it outside as it stinks bad enough to make you puke. To remove the core, put on a pair of thick gloves and grip the horn in one hand while using a corkscrew in the other to work it into the core. Using a twisting and pulling motion, rip out the core along with all the bloody mess. This stinks even worse. You'll be left with the horn itself. Give it a good wash out and allow to cool.

To make a drinking vessel, you'll need to saw off the pointy bit of the horn. Decide how tall you want the horn and saw part way round at the height you desire. leave about an inch uncut and saw two parallel lines straight up towards the top (widest part) of the horn. This one inch strip will form your handle once it's bend back down.

To bend the handle down, boil the horn again for an hour or so to soften it a bit, then heat a piece of sand filled copper pipe. Put the hot pipe in a vice and carefully bend the handle over the pipe. The heat will help it to bend. Once you have the handle bent over and running back down the vessle you can attach the base. This can be from either horn, carefully fitted into a groove cut in the base and hot fitted, or more simply made from a disk of wood like birch or sycamore. You cut the disk and whittle it so it fits snugly inside the base of the horn. You can use any glue - and epoxy glue works well. Once set, pour some brewers pitch in to cover the bottom and your drinking vessel is done.

It can only be used for cold drinks. If you want hot drinks, use a wooden mug. Horn doesn't take kindly to hot liquids - not only will it make the drink taste awful, it'll distort the shape of the vessel.

To make a flat horn plate, cut the tip off the horn then saw right up the length from bottom to top. Boil the horn continuously until you can lever the horn apart. Once you can get it opened up you get two sheets of 18mm ply, larger then the horn all round and smother these with tallow (beef dripping from supermarket, but not lard). The tallow acts as a lubricant allowing you to free the horn once it has cooled.

Place the flattened horn between the slabs of ply and clamp them together tightly. You'll need three or four clamps on each side as the horn will try to curl back on itself as it cools. Leave clamped for a couple of days. Remove the clamps and wedge off the boards. They'll probably have set solid so a good whack with a wedge will be needed. Once you have your slab of horn you can have a go at splitting it into sheets. It is possible to separate the horn into fourteen or fifteen different sheets, going ever thinner until you can see through the horn sheets. If trying this, cut the original down into the smallest squares you can get away with before trying to split.

Lanterns were originaly made from wooden frames and horn windows. The original name was Lanthorn which we turned into lantern. If making lanthorn panes you'll need to smooth and polish the panes to make them more translucent.

Hope this helps,

Eric

 

[moduser]

Thanks guys, excellent advice.

Fortunately, the core is already absent so no boil and puke .

Eric your description of the handle was better than mine but that's exactly what I had in mind.

The idea of cutting a slot for a disk is good. Any idea on how much shinkage to expect? I'd like to avoid splitting the cup because I made the base too big.

Thanks again

David

 

[jdlenton]

Nice guide to horn Eric forgot to mention the awful stench
Where did you get your hron from moduser? Is the outside raw or has that been treated in anyway?

 

[Eric_Methven]

Fitting a horn base into the cup part is tricky. You'll need to scribe the exact inside diameter of the cup onto paper or card. Then add the thickness of the groove - say a sixteenth of an inch or so. You add that all round. If the bottom of the cup isn't perfectly round (and I guarantee it won't be) make a mark on both the base drawing and ourside of the cup with a dab of nail varnish (or something you can wipe/chip off later) so you can allign them during fitting.

Cut carefully round the template and paste it to a piece of thinnish horn that will form the bottom of the cup. Carefully sand the edges down (a dremel is good for this, otherwise a file and sandpaper) until the exact profile matches the template. Transfer the registration mark from the paper to the horn then remove the paper template. If you pasted it on it will just soak off.

Cutting the groove on the inside of the cup is the hardest part. It has to be as straight as possible and this can be achieved with a dremel and small saw blade. I fit two saw blades side by side to give the right width (If your base is thick, add saw blades to the same thickness). I then also add a wooden disk ever so slightly smaller than the saw blade diameter. This is to act as a stop to prevent me going too deep. If you added a sixteenth to the inside diameter, then a wooden disk a sixteenth smaller than the saw blade will ensure you only cut a sixteenth into the cup.

The next bit comes down to a steady hand. With the dremel held carefully, work the saw round the inside of the base. You need to make sure the start and finish of the cuts meet otherwise your base won't fit.

Once that's done, go round the cut with a sliver of folded sandpaper or wet and dry emery and clean the cut up so it's nice and smooth.

At this point you have a disk of horn (which should have a slight bend to it) and a cup with a groove cut around the base. I forgot to add that the groove should be a quarter inch up inside or so. This makes fitting the disk easier as there's less to stretch.

Boil the cup for a while and check to see how maleable it has become. You don't want it floppy but you'll need to feel movement there without distorting it. Once you reach that stage, you can try and fit the base disk. I find that boiling the base disk means you have two soft materials to fit together, so I tend not to heat the base disk at all. Because the base disk has a slight curve to it, part of it will fit into the cup first. Try and locate this (going in from the bottom) first part in the groove and then push the rest in from the centre (That means putting your thumb on the middle of the disk and pushing the base disk until it clicks into the rest of the groove.

If you've heated the cup sufficiently it'll stretch to acommodate the disk. If not, the disk either won't go in, or the wall of the cup will crack. This is rare and you'd need muscles like Garth to crack a horn cup just by pushing the base disk.

As it cools it will shrink slightly taking up any slack and as long as you got the registration marks aligned when you fitted it, it should be a tight fit. The other thing is, because the base disk was slightly curved, half of it will be pressing up into the groove and half of it will be pressing down into the groove making it even tighter without adding undue pressure to the wall of the cup.

Once you reach that stage try filling it with water and see if it leaks. If not, you've done a real good job and if it does leak, put some clear silicone bath sealant round the base to seal it. Then wipe any excess off so it seals the groove from the outside.but you can't see it.

That's about it, ask if you have any more questions.

Eric

 

[moduser]

Eric,

Excellent advice, looking forward to starting this project.

James,

I picked the horn up from a stall at the weekend. It was a re enactment thing at Bovington Tank Museum.

His URL is www.english-longbow.co.uk

If you look in the catalogue it's about halfway down.

David

 

[jdlenton]

Thanks Dave
Tanks and cool stuff you had a good weekend

James

 

[moduser]

You too James.

Obviously I'll post some pictures of my efforts, good or bad

Thanks again to Eric and everyone else for their advice.

David

 

[moduser]

OK folks I keep coming across references to "supposadly" the definitive book on working with these materials called:

Bone, Antler, Ivory & Horn: The Technology of Skeletal Materials Since the Roman Period by MacGregor, Arthur

Now a quick search shows that a) it's out of print and b) second hand from a dealer is around $500.00 US, yep that is not a typo.

Does anyone have a copy I could borrow and photocopy?

Many thanks

David