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  #1  
Old 06-09-2015, 12:02 AM
Lacumo Lacumo is offline
 
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Bone Scale Question

I?m interested in the possibility of making scales out of bones I can get from the meat dept at a large supermarket (beef or pork---I don?t know what). These bones would be ?fresh? with very little soft tissue still left attached. What would I need to do to clean and dry/cure these bones? Would they be potentially good or bad material for making scales from? Is this a potentially viable idea or another of my ?lifetime worst? ideas that would be best abandoned ASAP?

Many thanks for any and all insights, experiences, opinions &/or advice...
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  #2  
Old 06-09-2015, 07:36 AM
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Ray Rogers Ray Rogers is offline
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Bone scales made from cow bone are incredibly cheap to buy so it is difficult to imagine why you would want to spend time making them - and it would take a lot of time, time better spent making a knife. Bone scales can be bought in a very large array of colors or in plain white, they are available with a myriad of patterns carved into them or in their original smooth state so you can carve your own pattern. If there is a reason to make your own cow bone scales it eludes me....


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Old 06-09-2015, 11:30 AM
Lacumo Lacumo is offline
 
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Originally Posted by Ray Rogers View Post
If there is a reason to make your own cow bone scales it eludes me....
Actually, I was going to use the scales on a slingshot handle, which would require scales that are considerably thicker than typical knife scales and would have a thick, half-round cross section. That being said, I?d greatly prefer to buy them rather than going to the trouble of processing them myself. Being new and unburdened by any knowledge, I could use any leads anybody could provide on where I could find cow bone scales.
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Old 06-09-2015, 12:46 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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Jantz Knifemaking Supply carries some. Masecraft Supply has a larger selection.

One thing to remember about working with bone is that it doesn't just stink, it reeks if you try to work it with power tools.

Doug


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Old 06-09-2015, 01:19 PM
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Ray Rogers Ray Rogers is offline
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Knowing what you intend to do with them makes all the difference. Maybe you really want scales, I don't know, but if you would rather have round bones of the approximate size of a slingshot handle you might look to your hunter friends for some domestic deer leg bones. If you want something a little more elegant the suppliers that Doug mentioned sometimes have giraffe bones available. Most giraffe bones are enormous, of course, but there are some very thin bones in there too .......


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Old 06-09-2015, 05:07 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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If you are looking for whole cleaned and prep'ed bone you could also give Moscow Hide and Fur a look. Ebay is also worth looking at.

Doug


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Old 06-09-2015, 07:18 PM
Lacumo Lacumo is offline
 
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Originally Posted by Doug Lester View Post
.....One thing to remember about working with bone is that it doesn't just stink, it reeks if you try to work it with power tools.
Doug
Yikes! Thanks a million for that critically important tip. This whole idea just got consigned to my personal Bad Idea Boneyard (no pun intended).
I do my work in a local HS woodworking shop, where I teach an evening Continuing Ed program Intro to Woodworking course. I can?t go stinking the place up.
I have a good assortment of synthetic materials that I can continue to use without problems. The bone idea was just my getting unnecessarily fancy.
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Old 06-10-2015, 05:54 AM
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Crex Crex is offline
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You can get dried bone in the round at Petsmart and other pet stores pretty cheap. Find the right sized piece and you won't have to do much in the way of grinding. Mostly just sawing, filing, and sanding that can all be done by hand. Not much "smell" that route.

ps - some of them also carry deer antler tips/tines of fairly decent size - bird/trout size.


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Old 06-11-2015, 09:26 PM
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ckluftinger ckluftinger is offline
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Okay, I'm going to put in a word on behalf of my dog, Cassie. I buy her the bones and let her chew / play / bury and unearth them for a few months until there is nothing left but a bleached, hollow shell. All the marrow and "soft" parts are gone ( and Cassie is happy to help out here) and I have a clean, hard, non-smelly white substance I can use for all sorts of things - spacers, butt caps, scales... I have a couple of lamb and deer bones buried in the compost for future use as well. They develop an interesting patina in the dirt... It's an interesting medium, doesn't really require much work, and I made it (with the help of my dog...)! I'm sure it's not the most efficient use of my time, but then neither is surfing the web... Cassie wants me to continue using bone in my knifemaking.


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Old 06-11-2015, 10:02 PM
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Ray Rogers Ray Rogers is offline
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Carl, that sounds like a really cool idea but I don't have a dog. At first, I considered trying the same thing with my squirrels but then I realized they would run off with the bone and I'd never find it again.

So, I guess I'll have to chew on the bone myself. That might not be all bad though, it might cut down on my grocery bill....


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Old 06-11-2015, 11:22 PM
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ckluftinger ckluftinger is offline
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If I had squirrels big enough to run off with a cow bone I wouldn't try to stop them...


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Old 06-12-2015, 08:13 AM
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One of them ran off with a socket wrench I was working with one time. She could barely hold onto the slick metal handle, I caught up with her only because dragging the wrench through the dirt slowed her down so much....


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Old 06-12-2015, 08:32 PM
Lacumo Lacumo is offline
 
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Originally Posted by ckluftinger View Post
Okay, I'm going to put in a word on behalf of my dog, Cassie. I buy her the bones and let her chew / play / bury and unearth them for a few months until there is nothing left but a bleached, hollow shell. All the marrow and "soft" parts are gone ( and Cassie is happy to help out here) and I have a clean, hard, non-smelly white substance I can use for all sorts of things - spacers, butt caps, scales...
Burying them sounds good and I could do that. Do you figure if I took some fresh bones (as big as I can get at the supermarket meat dept), buried them right now and dug them up in late November I?d have adequately cleaned, "ready-to-work? bones? That?d give them ~5 months in the ground. I?m ~100 miles south of Montreal and things here mostly freeze up around here in December, so I don’t know if leaving them in the ground after that would be of any use.

I can bury them near the side of a small lake if that?d expedite the cleaning process.
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