6 Horns, a Bag, and a Spoon.

[Frozen Run]

The failed flattening attempt mentioned a number of posts back, I saved the carcass, I'm going to revive it as a ball horn. A ball horn does not need to be air tight, it can in fact have gaps and openings as large as slightly smaller than the size of the roundball you want to keep in there.

This is probably my biggest tip for any new horners out there: SAVE EVERYTHING!

[Frozen Run]

3a. Here is that failed flattening of the previously rude horn that I'm now turning into a ball horn. I dressed it down some. The mouth split a little when I was drilling out the mouth to 1/2". Whatever.  I have the cracks glued up now but plan on more substantial repairs later on. My plan is to paint it blue.

3b. The spoon mold I started carving.

8. Fixed hole from previous owner. Started finishing the spout I turned.

9. Dressed it down some.

I found this older knife at the antique store for a couple dollars. I removed the handle and plan on turning it into a trade knife.

[Frozen Run]

3a. Continued shaping, then painted it blue.

8. Shaped it some.

9. Began engrailing and scrimshaw. Still needs touched up and adjusted in certain areas.

II. This is not my work but a belt pouch I purchased at a rendezvous. Unfortunately my one friend John insisted I make him a bag and that bag needs a donor face so here we go. For the sake of future discussion, I am retroactively  labeling the initial bag in this discussion "I".

[Frozen Run]

[Tony N]

I’m a fan of the way that you age your work! Very interesting thread to follow, thank you

Tony

[Frozen Run]

Thank you for the kind words!

[Frozen Run]

I've been at a rendezvous the last couple of weekends so I haven't been doing much in my shop. I still thought it a good time to get some updates in.



1 and 8. Haven't really done much, threw some color on. Not really sure how exactly I'm going finish these out. They both have a lot of really cool potential so I don't want to waste it.

3a. Toned the blue down with hot dye and it cracked, fit and installed the base plug and it cracked, drove a staple in and it cracked, tried with a second staple and that cracked too. The linen wrap turned out well. The cork I bartered from a guy who had no interest in letting it go.

10. I bought this mounted rack off a trade blanket and the horns on it were tiny, and from the Philippines. My one friend practically begged me to make him a horn so my plan here is to see if I can squeeze two bad ideas hard enough to press them into one good idea.

III. A different friend of mine, the one I started this thread for, made the most wonderful spontoon pipe hawk and gave it to me so now I'm making him a waxed haversack and a flint and tool wallet. Growing up I heard coke can take the chrome off a bumper so I'm going to see if it'll take the chrome off that buckle.

I will start a separate thread for the spontoon pipe hawk.

[Frozen Run]

1. Just to recap on this horn, I had blown out the side when drilling the spout some time back but did not drill into the body thankfully, so I glued in a dowel to make the area look like bug damage and successfully redrilled the spout. The dowel repair is fine, but there was the tiniest of gaps at one end near the tip end that I pushed some glue in and it sealed up fine but it was bugging me pun intended so I just kept this horn on the back burner while I worked on other projects. In hindsight I regret not fixing the hole with pewter. I didn't know what to do with it because the plan was to make a generically PA dandy but all that was coming out was a lot of homespun swagger. So I decided to drill out the area I wasn't really happy with, plug it with a dowel with the plan to make a super greasy horn with some insane scrimshaw on it.

3a. Somewhere underneath there is a ball horn. Ball horn or ball flask? Someone please correct me. Is ball horn a correct term and/or can it be a ball flask if made out of horn instead of metal?

8. I dressed it down some more and pinned the walnut tip. The stopper will be a rolled up bit of leather like I saw Tim do on one of his horns once. I'd like to do some scrimshaw work on it, but I can't decide what. It's going to take advantage of the fact this horn is meant to represent one that was cut down from a larger horn. I have some fun ideas rolling around, but I don't know what yet.

10. I really did not like the direction this horn was going so I threw in the towel on the rings idea, I rasped them off and am making a screw tip. I cut the threads and screwed on the horn tip.

Absent from the picture as I forgot to include it is the chrome buckle I tried stripping with coke. The results of the experiment are a couple tiny flecks of chrome floating in the coke, my conclusion here is:

1. Coke will not strip chrome off a buckle.

or

2. The buckle is not chrome.

Whatever.

Also, you'll see a small pile of deer foreheads in the picture as I've been buying racks at flea markets and at a rendezvous. Does anyone know what I can do with them? I'd hate for them to go to waste. Thank you.

[Frozen Run]

1. I repaired the repaired tip, installed a staple, colored it more, and scrimshawed the horn. It's ready for further color and finish.

Instead of the staple, I wanted to curl a cut nail and pound that in which I've seen on originals. I decided not to though because I'm pretty far into the horn and didn't want to risk splitting the base plug. And because I was concerned it would be a bit much esthetically.

I wanted to make a map horn and I know who it's going to so I thought it be fun to make a map horn around the 1989 NES game Friday the 13th. I changed things around though to stay loosely in period. The date on it is July 13th 1792, which is the summertime Friday the 13th in that year. Instead of the fictional county of Wessex, I changed it to the fictional The Wessex Territory to make it sound less settled, stuff like that.






8. Here is a horn modeled from a horn cut down from a larger horn. Originally this horn started off as a fragment, missing kneck, 2 holes drilled in the body with a shoelace, other issues. One hole I eliminated as it was very close to the base which was cracked up. The other hole I plugged with a dowel as was done in period. The tip is turned walnut, I didn't want to practice on bone as it's expensive. It turned out well so I just ran with it. Turned walnut is correct.

I talked to the future owner and he wanted the Square and Compass on it so I copied it from an original Mercer county horn somebody posted here. The initials on the horn are an older family member of his and I carved his initials in the base plug. I used different color ink on the scrimshaw to try and imply they were scrimshawed at different times.

The rings I shaped were from body horn and I don't believe I was able to shape them deep enough to be functional with the thickness I had to work with so I installed a drawer pull. I got the ring pull from an old molding plane. I start screwing it in and and the ring starts buckling so I just remove it thinking it was just a split ring. Well, it was a split ring resting on two dimples!

The darn thing isn't drilled straight through so I get out my cordless drill and drill for like 20 minutes, an impossible amount of time, an impossible mountain of brass shavings piling up on my shirt before I drilled through. And it pulled my drill through and the battery cracked that slot in the base rim that the strap was going to feed through. Oh well. You see it common on originals where there was a slot on the side of the horn and the base plug wallowed out some and then the strap would be nailed to the base plug. I don't know why the rigamarole of going through all that just to nail it to the base plug? Doesn't matter, I'll just add some more nails. This is ready for more color and finishing up.

The ruby stone is there as a flex.

[Frozen Run]

11. I got both of these horns off one of those mounts you see at flea markets and thrift stores for 20 bucks. Wafer thin the entire length and almost no tip, I decided to make a couple of quick and dirty horns. The base was pretty tore up on this one so I sawed it off. The wacky thing about this horn is it has 1/8 dowel for pins instead of the usual tooth picks. I don't think I'll like it.

12. This one I thought I could save the base but it only caused it to split when I fit the base plug, so I backed it off some and packed the crack with glue. I had considered just cutting it off and refitting the plug, but this whole horn is pretty rough. If that stabilizes things then I'll do a barktan wrap.

[Frozen Run]

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[rich pierce]

Grungy! Great job on grunge, color, patina - a very interesting horn.

[Tim Crosby]

 Well done, they look right.

   Tim

[Frozen Run]

Thank you Rich and Tim!

[Gaeckle]

So......Donnie shows up at the Trades Fair with a horn for Phil Campbell. He shows it to me....it looks totally different from what is seen in the pictures. It has that 'look'....it has a feel of genuineness, it looks like some sort of time traveler with a heady story to tell. It just POW!.....it's makes one wonder what stories lurk in this work.

Good job Donnie, you've got a talent, keep on a going 👏

[Frozen Run]

The pictures aren't too shabby though.

[Frozen Run]

I'm far from needing that buckle I mentioned earlier so I've just left it in the coke where much to my surprise there is now a considerable layer of something floating in the coke. It appears that given enough time, coke will in fact strip mystery plating off a buckle. The only question that remains now is how does it taste!

[bluenoser]

That and what will remain of the buckle

[Frozen Run]

I've been keeping a pretty close eye on the buckle, I've also looked up buckle anatomy. The bar and prong are completely stripped of whatever was on it and is now completely black. The frame is being more resilient and is currently a hodgepodge of colors and textures.