Colonel Coon Knives

[just bob]

In the August issue of Knife World there is a very well written article on
the history and making of the Colonel Coon knives written by Tonya Hinch. I
would recommend this to all. Pertaining to knife repair and restoration I'd
like to post a couple of items of interest from that article. (1) Adrian
Harris did a lot of experimentation with the dying of the bone using
mixtures of water, leather dye, and diesel oil. Clearly the phrase used here
is diesel oil and not diesel fuel. This may be a colloquialism and the terms
may be used interchangeably in certain parts of the country? There have been
a lot of posts in this forum about bone dying and this is the first I have
heard of diesel oil. Maybe this is what is needed to open the pores on the
bone and get the dye to penetrate? You can see posts on here where leather
dye has been used. My experience is that while this may look good it is not
a deep dye that lasts like factory bone. This may be worth some looking in
to. (2) Mr. Harris cut every other tooth from a 1/2" tap and then dragged it
across the bone to create the jigged effect on some of his Barlow pattern knives. A
knife like this is pictured and looks great. I wondered a while back if
anyone had figured out a way to alter a router bit to create jigged bone?
Surely this would work in some form; to alter a bit, and set up a fence on a
router table, and feed the smooth bone into it to create a jigged bone. Has
anyone perfected this?

[jerryd6818]

Bob,

Diesel Oil and Diesel Fuel are interchangeble names for fuel obtained from petroleum distillation that is used in diesel engines.