Bone handle production question

M

MountainGuardian

Joined
Oct 12, 2018
Messages
6
I have been making bone blade knives and using rawhide for handles. I slaughter several 600 to 800 pound hogs each year for meat for the family and I have a rather large supply of big bone material that has built up over the last 8 to 10 years.

It is pretty easy for me to cut 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inch wide by 8 to 10 inch long pieces of about 1/8 inch to 5/32 inch thickness. I would like to be able to laminate two pieces together and get 1/4 inch thick pieces in that size range. I could sand but you never get a perfect flat surface sanding, well not perfect enough to laminate as well as I would like.

When I want perfectly surfaced wood I just run it through my planar and get it perfect and laminate it. My question is whether I can run bone through my planer. I have some big concerns that the bone will just fracture all to hell and I will be ordering another set of planer blades. If the bone doesn't fracture or chip badly on the edges in the process I was also concerned that the bone may just hang up in the auto feed and burn.

On the last two concerns I can mitigate them by making a board to hold the piece in giving the sides of the bone a bit more support and making sure the auto feed will run everything through just fine without stuttering or stopping. That still leaves me with the big unknown as to whether bone can even realistically "be" planed in a wood planer without just destroying everything. Does anyone have any previous experience in this area?

I am running a DeWalt 734 auto feed planer. I am currently attempting to connect to chat with DeWalt, but with that particular question I could still be awaiting an answer come Christmas time....
 
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I finally found my first bit of information on a machining forum of all places. A guy machined some deer bone for his neighbor to make a name plate for a mounted deer head. He had trouble cutting it as it created enough heat to warp it at his machining speed. In the reply comments it was stated that you need to work as dry a bone material as possible at a medium speed, high speed tends to heat the bone too much and low speed causes fracturing of the bone. They also mentioned that the bone is quite tough on bits so one needs to use at least a carbide bit to work the material cutting in thin layers with a quick feed rate to avoid heating.
 
After watching numerous videos on cutting bone nuts for guitars I am going to say that the planer is out of the question, so I will need to mill the bone on my mill, honestly I should have realized that from the start but I guess the planer seemed like an easier faster solution. Now to come up with a water soluble cutting fluid that won't cost a fortune, I can't believe the prices they are asking for that. I got to thinking that I might could use a wax as a cutting lubricant but that would be a bit of a pain and would leave quite a residue on the bone requiring quite a clean up before lamination. I could always go with compressed air for debris removal and cooling and use a detergent and water mix as a cutting lubricant as long as I am not cutting at to high a speed, would be relatively easy to clean after cutting, though I would have to dry the bone before laminating and hope there is no warpage in the drying process. A slow drying process should help reduce any warpage.

I am noticing a lack of any kind of feedback here, thankfully I have a pretty steep learning curve, maybe with any luck someone will find the information discovered thus far useful to them at some point.
 
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I find it useful. I have messed with some horn and bone and it has been impossiable to get flat thru sanding. I have had to machine both. I machined both with a fly cutter and I machined them dry. I did run compressed air on them but no lube. I could not tell you any feed rates or RPMs. Just took it easy and flattened it off.
 
Sounds like you need a surface grinder. I flatten all my scales on a surface grinder that has been converted to use a belt.
 
I have some surface grinders belt sanders etc, but it is hard to get a perfectly flat milled surface that will laminate without a visible seam between the pieces. Milling should be easy enough and will be plenty accurate enough. It would have been a bit easier if bone would run through the planar like wood does.
 
I work bone and horn by hand and work it dry. (Actually, a fenced powersaw to make initial cuts what gets surfaces fairly close.) Then just like lapping anything else, figure ”8” with sandpaper on a granite or floatglass slab.
I dont use anything what may absorb to wet the surfaces.
 
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