All About Pocket Knives

We went to a local yard sale today and I found four complete sets of elk jaw bones. Both sides of the jaws still connected at the bottom front teeth. Got all four sets for $2.00! I'm hoping they will make some great jigged bone handles for some of knives in need of dressing up. They should give me some good experience at jigging, worm grooving and the burnt bone look.

Any advice on how to proceed, or more importantly how NOT to proceed will be greatly appreciated.

Dewman

Here is a thread we had some time back on jigging & dying bone.

Dale

http://allaboutpocketknives.com/knife_f ... php?t=3599

orvet; ...Thanks for the link.

I for got about it.
Do you die the bone before you stabilise it ?
How can you get the color in the groves after you grove it ?

M&M did you ever use the frog skin scales on a knife ?

Frog legs and cat still tastes like chicken to me....

Fellers,

By no means, am I expert at bone-dyeing. But I enjoyed a fair amount of success, years ago, with this process.

First - I jigged the bone before dyeing, because I was never able to get the dye to penetrate completely.

The ONLY dye I ever found that truly penetrated the bone was potassium permanganate. ( I tried a buncha other stuff, too.) I mixed up p.p. with plain tap water, about 1 Tbsp in a tall baby-food jar. Maybe 4 oz. size ? Then, I put the bone in the jar of dye, and put it in a big saucepan of water, and brought the water to a boil. I guess you call this a double boiler ?

Results always varied, I guess because of different bones, etc... but I just let it boil, until I was satisfied that it had truly pentetrated the bone to some degree. Sometimes 30 min. sometimes as much as 90 min.

Doing it that way, the dye penetrated at least enough, so that after cleaning it up, I could at least buff the bone to a high shine, without going thru the dye and having white spots show up.

I've been doing some reading lately about the process, and one thing stands out at me, that I was omitting. For deeper penetration, the bone should be soaked in a mordant for 2 - 3 days, before dyeing. Mordant is a fancy word for an agent that allows the dye to "stick". Everything I've read so far, uses a high concentration of alum in plain tap water as a mordant.

I'm still a month or more away from having a working shop, so I've got bigger fish to fry, at the moment. But, once I'm working again, I've got a couple other dyes in mind, that I'll be able to report on, then. Specifically, walnut husks for a brown color, and apple bark for a honey-yellow. BTW, the p.p. is pure black, and polishes to almost a mirror shine.

Don't take any of this as gospel - it's just what "sorta" worked for me. I hope, if you try it, that it works for you. Just trying to help....

Take Care,
JR

JR, thanks for your input, it's always nice to hear more about dyeing and jigging bone, since it is something I am far from proficient at. I have found it is best if you cannot get the dye to penetrate deep enough to shape and haft your handles, then jig, then dye, so once they come out of the dye all you need to do is let them dry, glue/pin them on and buff so there is very little chance of losing your dye to the hafting process.

Dewey, I'm not usre if the jawbones will work or not. I have never cut on elk jawbone but I'm going to assume it's a larger version of a deer which I have cut up, it is very pourus inside and only has a thick shell of maybe 1/16" before it gets to the pith. I look forward to hearing how they work/look once cutup to see if they are salevageable. I have a project going utilizing the other part of that jaw

Muskrat -

I used to have a supply for cow jawbones, they are close to 1/8" before the pith. But, there's not a lot to work with, either - one set of scales, and throw the rest away.

People keep telling me to go to Petco for shinbones - I've heard of Petco, but never seen one of their stores. (This is Arkansas, remember...) Supposedly, they're quite cheap...like $1.99 per each. The few slaughter houses I've been to, wouldn't sell me any shinbones - they sell them to be ground up, for other purposes. If Petco is selling the whole shinbone, that seems to be a great bargain.

I gotta go work on the shop, cyall later,

JR

yeah, cow shin bones are great, the thich bones (depending on shape) work good too. superpetz, petco, all sorts of pet stores sell the shinbones, you caN GETTHE GIANT THIGH BONES FOR ABOUT $5 iirc sorry, caps lock was on

thanks M&M and Ringmaster very interesting to me now.

JR,
Thanks for your input on dying.
I bet you have a Walmart in Arkansas. Try checking their pet section for the large bones. You will probably have to boil them in TSP to get the junk off, but it should work & they are pretty good size. In Oregon they are about $8.99 per bone.

justold52 wrote:Do you die the bone before you stabilise it ?
How can you get the color in the groves after you grove it ?

JR is right, jig first then dye. The bone is dense enough that it doesn't need to be stabilized.

muskrat man wrote:JR, thanks for your input, it's always nice to hear more about dyeing and jigging bone, since it is something I am far from proficient at. I have found it is best if you cannot get the dye to penetrate deep enough to shape and haft your handles, then jig, then dye, so once they come out of the dye all you need to do is let them dry, glue/pin them on and buff so there is very little chance of losing your dye to the hafting process.
:

Kaleb- I had trouble with polishing the color off too. I dyed one piece, jigged it, then dyed it again. It had close to 2 hours boiling in the dye. I was using dark brown & light yellow-brown. You can see how it came out on the pic below of a 197UH. The pile side best shows the problem of loosing the color when hafting & polishing.

The second pic is a LB-7 my grandson re-handled with some bone I jigged & dyed when I did the other pieces. This was dyed only once with blue Rit dye. The main difference between the way the bone was dyed is that the blue was only dyed once, but it set for several months before my grandson used it. I was surprised at how far the dye had penetrated.
I don't know if it was because the bone set for several months & really dried out, or if the blue dye just penetrated better.

I think my next project will be to dye some bone using a small pressure cooker to see if that will get the dye in deeper.

Dale

Well fellers, (almost couldn't find this thread, it's been several days)....

Neway, I definitely hit the jackpot today, for a supply of bone. Previously, Dale sent me to Walmart Pet Dep't - and they did have something they called a 'Ribeye' bone. That one's bleaching in the sun, right now...

So, this morning, after the obligatory stop at the hardware store, I was cruising down the road, and I spied this old processing plant, sittin' back off the road. I went in, and began to query the old guy who runs the place, about any 'shinbones' they might have. Well, he's hard of hearing, so he thought I was just a poor bum, begging for 'soupbones', and he started to dismiss me. (Not that he wouldn't have given them to me, if he had them - he just didn't). Neway, I finally got across to him, what I wanted, and why. He sez, "Come this way", and grabbed the only kid in the whole plant (about 30)...we go back to the scrap room, and there's barrels of stuff ready to haul off.

These folks are SO nice - the young guy immediately started "dumpster diving" in the scrap barrels, and then hollered out to the old-timer that was "rough cutting" and he came in and started helping. I 'splained to the older fellow, that I was looking primarily for shinbones for p.knives, and he said "Oh, you want FEET !". It wasn't but just a minute, before a coupla shinbones, with hooves attached, came flying thru the door.

I left with enough for about 6 sets of handles, easily. And a request that I come back next Thursday (to coincide with their cutting schedule). Took me about 3 hrs of "Trimming", ( I'm no butcher ), but it's all boiling in the biggest pot I own, right now.

Genuinely nice people, and an un-ending supply of bone - what a great find ! Yeah, it'll take a little work in the kitchen, and later with a bandsaw, but you can't beat the price !

Of course I looked at their knives - any of us would, right ? - They were using Forschner, almost exclusively, except for a Green River buffalo skinner pattern. These guys make their living with cutlery, so take note.

I can already see I'm gonna be making a few "freebies" for these folks, to try to repay them. (And also to get their opinion, heh heh !)

Everybody gets lucky, once in awhile,
JR

one thing i do to get dyes to penetrate is put the peice in the solution. cover with the lid real tight. poke a small hole in the top. use a brake bleeder vacuum pump (the hand pump). Start pumping and it will start bubbling like crazy. I guess it is displacing air pockets with the dye. Leave the suction for a little while and then release suction. the peice should sink once you let the suction off. If not, I pump it up again. I keep doing this till it sinks or till i'm tired of pumping. which ever comes first.