Working with bone.

S

Sword and Shield

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Apr 3, 2004
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I'm pondering using an Old Hickory butcher knife as steel for a fixed blade project, and was planning on handling it in bone. Of course, this leads to questions.

What kind of bone is best? Is simple beef femur good enough? I can get that easily enough from the butcher.

How should I cut it? How do I stabilize it? What about dyeing, drilling for rivets and shaping?

I've used my local library, but to no effect. Maybe I'm using the wrong terms on Google, but as yet, I'm striking out.

ETA. Forgot to ask- the OH blades are quite soft. Can I retemper the blade with a good long 400F soak, or do I need to completely re-heat treat?
 
You can get a big beef femur at a local pet store really cheap and it's already dried out.
 
I don't know about the bone, but tempering it wont make it any harder. I would leave it the way it is.
 
Get the bone from a pet store,set it on a anthill and cover it with a bucket, and set a brick,block or rock on top to keep it from blowing away. the ants will strip it clean in a week or 2. Buy 3-4 femures when you do. They have alot of variation in thickness from end to end. Expect to get about 1-2 usable scales per femur. As far as working it wear a respirator and a expect a very nasty smell. you can rivet it just becareful not to hit the bone very hard. Drilling it and sanding it is very very easy, dieing it is as easy as setting it down in a container of dye for a day or 3, Rit liquid works well, and is easily gotten at any hobby / dept store. good luck and use plenty of ventilation and old clothes cuase you'll smell like it after working it.
 
If you don't have an anthill near by, my usual technique is:

1) Cut off as much meat as possible, get as much bone marrow and spongy bone out
2) Put in a bucket of soap and an enzyme cleaner (Napisan or something) with triple the recommended amount, leave for a day or two.
3) Remove everything that's not bone
4) Leave it out to dry, the warmer the weather the better. It'll smell funny, if you want you can leave it out until the smell goes. As J.S. Carter said, it'll still stink when you work with it though.
 
What are the recommended temperatures for HT and tempering of 1095? I'd like a final RC of about 60, but the sources I've seen conflict- I've seen around 1600F for the HT, and anywhere from 375 to 500 for the temper.
 
I think giraffe bone is the best as it is very dense - like ivory. Camel bone is also very dense and would work well.

You shouldn't need to stabilize bone unless it has cracked from drying and then it really isn't stabilizing but repairing......

To keep it from warping do not let the bone get hot....... Use a light touch and you may want to do the flat sanding by hand.

I have occasionally gotten camel bones for less than $20. with shipping. I have also won a couple of giraffe bones for under $50.00 shipped. It sounds like a lot for the giraffe but you can get a lot of scales out of one decent shaped bone........
 
ryan9977 said:
could you use an acid to clean the bone?....ryan
Click to expand...

Nope! There's an old science experiment we used to do in 4th grade. Put a dry chicken bone in a jar of vinegar and in a couple of days you can bend it like it's made out of rubber.
 
I cleaned a cow skull once by filling a bucket with chlorine and soaking it for about a week, everything peeled right off or floated to the top, took it out, hosed it off. After it was clean I put it back in for another week and it bleached it white as snow. After that I let it sit in the sun until it was dry as a, well, bone.
 
Fast oil is Parks #50 or Brownell's fastquench.
Olive oil and light motor oil would be somewhere around a medium quench. They might work on a smaller 1095 blade, but the proper quenchant is really important with 1095 and W1/W2 steels. Of course, if you are brave ...there is always water.
Stacy
 
bladsmth said:
Fast oil is Parks #50 or Brownell's fastquench.
Olive oil and light motor oil would be somewhere around a medium quench. They might work on a smaller 1095 blade, but the proper quenchant is really important with 1095 and W1/W2 steels. Of course, if you are brave ...there is always water.
Stacy
Click to expand...

I'm not quite that brave- don't want to put in all the time on a piece of 1095, then have it crack. Wonder where I can get those, just internet?
 
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