cow horn

The only time I saw anyone practice scrimshaw was a fellow that used deer antler. He just painted india ink over the carved surface, and lightly polished off the excess. I don't recall if he sealed the surface. I would suppose that any lightfast ink would work.

Up and about eh RAD hope your on the mend

Probabley just iching to do something i bet, that would be something you shouldnt be doing?

Anyway thanks for the post had the basic idea of shaping the horn wasnt sure if it would carve with a rotary tool.

Has seen some work done with this but no experiance myself

I do have a shape i want and also some celtic designs in mind think its just a case of suck it and see

How it would look mounted on a hiking poles is another thing ,will have to use medeling clay 1st i think to check the balance of it.

Thats a nice piece of work and well designed

I assume you used a rotary tool with diamond cutters for the engraving?

Or did you just paint on the oil.

the design is crisp clean nice one

No rotary tools. All hand work and tedious! I had an old needle file that I broke the handle off of, good hard steel. I sharpened a point on it and attached a wood handle. It's about the size of a pencil. So I draw the design on the horn in pencil and then scratch the design in with the sharp steel point. Then I rubbed in the oil paint and rubbed off any excess. So after you rub off the excess the paint remains in the scratches. Straight green was too dark so I blended it with white paint to make it a lighter color. Came out pretty good. I got real interested in celtic knotwork designs. It's a blend of my own designs plus some stuff from the book of kells. So if you're looking to color your scrimshaw the oil paint works pretty good. Just use regular artists paints in the tubes like you find at a crafts store. A guy wanted me to make that for him but he never came back for it so I still have it

I like your dodo bird, that's a good carving!