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Engraving in ivory?
- Thread starter Eriksen
- Start date
Richard338
Gold Member
- Joined
- May 3, 2005
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- 7,288
I think carving and/or scrimshaw are what you want. Don't try to soften it.
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2013
- Messages
- 32,479
This^^^ you aren’t bending/shaping it. You want to scribe into the material ...There are books in this..
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2014
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- 1,518
Real ivory is tough to come by, and it is not going to get easier, especially a chunk large enough to do a knife handle. You can mess with the hardness of a lot of natural materials, but the recurring theme with it is that you never really get back to the same item that you started. Softening wood is easy, but you risk breaking the piece if there was hidden stress and you will have to address blown grain. Animal products like horn and antler have tremendous individual variation, addressing the condition of the material at hand is part of the skill in carving it. A Cnc machine can't do that--yet--and even softening it is no guarantee of survival of the process.
CnC bits aren't cheap, but you can replace them. If the problem is the level of detail not matching your level of hand-carving skills, a workaround might be contacting an experienced ivory carver. I knew a man, long since dead now, who would carve ivory bits that people brought him for the joy of working on the material. There are still Native Alaskans and First Nation Canadians who have huge experience with ivory.
CnC bits aren't cheap, but you can replace them. If the problem is the level of detail not matching your level of hand-carving skills, a workaround might be contacting an experienced ivory carver. I knew a man, long since dead now, who would carve ivory bits that people brought him for the joy of working on the material. There are still Native Alaskans and First Nation Canadians who have huge experience with ivory.
