All About Pocket Knives

Here is an experiment in bone dying I wanted to run by you guys in this forum and see what you thought of it. The knife is a very basic Westaco jack. I removed broken pen blade from made it a single blade knife. I got in a hurry and put it together without pinning the bone, then I had to take it apart and then the whole thing so it would stay together.

I'm really curious to get your feedback on the bone itself.
How do you like the color?
How do you like the rather random pattern?
Would you carry bone that look like this?
If you would carry it, what pattern would you prefer to see it in?

I appreciate y'alls help.

Thank you,
Dale

Has an appaloosa look to it.
I'm not a fan of it, but that's me.

Thank you Steve, that is exactly what I wanted, your honest opinion.
It is certainly not for everyone, but Case sells a lot of those Apploosa bone knives. Someone I must like it!.

Thanks so much Steve,
Dale

Dale, I like the mark side coloring. The pile side , not so much. I’m guessing that getting consistent results is difficult.

It does look like Apoloosa which i don't particularly like because often they remind me of a blotchy skin rash. This knife would not be for me.
kj

Dale the uneven coloration and inconsistency between the two slabs reminds me of a couple of my knives that have camel bone handles. I like them so I like what you've done.

Dale, I’m a big fan of Appaloosa Bone, so I like it.
SSk

Dale, I'm ridin' in from a different direction. I like the look, it looks old, like it's been around for a long time. I assume the color is showing the natural veins of the bone, again I like the look!
Treefarmer

Appaloosa is absolutely my favorite. I'll have to check, but I think that most, if not all of the appaloosa's that I own have significant variations in the color of the two sides. Nice job! Herb

Looks like the camel bone on the GEC made knives to me also. May lack luster or gloss , I am viewing on my phone though?

I like the richer color on the mark side as well as the color transition (almost white to dark brown at the bolster).

I think you will get enough differences in opinion that it will be hard to reach a conclusion about what to make that will sell. That said, if you get more than maybe that is enough.

Dennis

I think it's beautiful!
Call it Piebald bone.

I like that appaloosa look. I think there is a warmth to it.

1. Do you like the color: Yes
2. Do you like the random pattern: Yes
3. Would you carry this: Yes
4. What pattern would you like to see this in: Stockman, like a 6347.

Very nice job Dale. We would expect nothing less from a man with your talent.

____________
Mike

I wouldn’t spend my money on it. JMO. Not particularly a fan of Appaloosa bone. But I like the horses!

Ken

Honestly - to me the color and pattern on that knife are neutral. I do not look at it and think "that looks good" but neither do I look at it and think "that looks bad." If I saw a knife I like with that bone I would buy it and carry it for sure.

Dale, I admire the work you do on knives. Appaloosa is not something I crave. I would find the handle more attractive if it had less of the bright white in it - especially in a large contiguous section. I have no idea what is possible and what is not possible in the real world of knife making, but anything is possible in photoshop (lol). Here is an idea. My rendition is probably too consistent. I replicated color from other parts of the handle. I might also like it better if the rightmost 2/3 of the handle was more consistent with the leftmost 1/3 (i.e., the whole handle was predominantly white with specks of brown / gray).

Dale I’m with some of the other guys on the Appaloosa bone. I can tolerate it as long as it does not have too much white on it. But I’m not a fan in general. I feel the same way about stag. I don’t like fat stage at all and especially stag with lots of white showing on it. Just my humble opinion.

As to the rest of the knife, I like it. I bet it’s just as fantastic as all the rest of the work I’ve seen from you.

philco wrote:Dale the uneven coloration and inconsistency between the two slabs reminds me of a couple of my knives that have camel bone handles. I like them so I like what you've done.

Ditto!!

I think it looks beautiful.
But then I also like unstained, unvarnished furniture made from old-growth wood.
I like things that look more "natural".
If you put that bone on say and old Schrade 4" stockman I would buy it in a heartbeat... if I could afford it.

I'm guessing it's difficult, to get consistency, in the dye process, from what I've read about it. I really like the middle third, of the mark side. The pattern looks great. Overall, I think it looks pretty good. I'll bet it looks and feels even better, in hand
Edit: Yeah, like Ralph did, on the photoshop...nice job Ralph...if only you could apply that computer to dye and bone

I actually prefer the pile side. I'm not a fan of appaloosa and would not be drawn to this knife.

I Like were Your Going With It , but I would like to see some Vein Streaks like a Piece of Quarts ? Or Some imitation Cracks , Deeper the Better , Yet Smooth , Probably would be very Popular If You could Come up with Either Of my Opinions ? K.C.

I am one of the very few who has said i don't particularly like these handle pieces. The majority say "i like it". But no one has said: "Oh Wow ! I Love It. Fantastic".
Knife selling is a challenge. There are so many knives one could buy that only some get sold. Those that do sell often have the "Oh Wow" factor from design, blade grind and/or handles.
I think you should spend time working with handle materials that can be "Òh Wow". I have seen dyed giraffe bone that looks as good as the best mammoth and definitely is "Oh Wow". Checkered bone or ebony could be "Oh Wow", etc.
The O.P. bone i think should be put aside in favor of other bone that is able to better take on the dye, for example, giraffe.
kj

I certainly appreciate all of you taking the time to critique this bone dying attempt.
This really is a work in progress, I don't know that it will ever be finished but it is something I have been playing with for a year or so now. I have a bunch of pieces of bone and in various size of my shop, most smaller, that have been dyed in this process.

A year or so ago I stumbled across an old German knife that I thought had beautiful handles on it. I don't believe the original handles had been dyed, I think they may have been left just as plain white bone. But here is the knife that inspired this search, this Work-in-Progress, that keeps me coming back to this project. When I get the bone to repair this knife, I will think I did something right that day.
Once I got the pictures and enlarge them I was able to see that I had misread the tang stamp the first time. I now believe the tang stamp says:J DIRLAM & SONS/SOLINGEN GERMANY. My original thought was the tang stamp was J DERLAM.

The effect that I got dying the bone was interesting, but it was not what I was looking for.
If anyone has ideas on how to achieve this type of coloring AS on this old knife, please let me know.

I will share my dying method with your folks that you have been so good to share your time with me in critiquing these handles.

I USED some small pieces of bone and some larger ones as well, and I mixed up a solution of water and Potassium Permanganate. Roughly 4 ounces of water and a tablespoon of PP. I laid the bone carefully in a flat glass container, very similar to a butter dish, and I poured the PP & water solution carefully into the container so that the level of dying solution did not get on the surface of the bone slabs. The color you see coming through is the potassium permanganate that has worked its way through the capillary structure of the bone dying the bone as it went.I allowed the bone to lay in the dish for several hours, some I left lying there for several days, adding dye or water to the dish from time to time. Some pieces of bone absorbed a lot of dye while I watched them, while others showed very little change over a few days.

Some of the bone was far more porous than others and took a great deal of the dye and other pieces took very little dye. As someone pointed out the process is not at all controlled, it's very random in one sense because you never know how a piece of bone will take the dye, but it is rather obvious that the lighter more porous bone will absorb more of the dye than the denser bone. Obviously the more dye absorbed, the more color absorbed by the bone.

I did one experiment where I dyed the slab with PP and then afterwords soaked it in yellow shoe dye. The result was inconclusive because I need a far bigger sample, but as you might expect buying all those bone handle slabs and then dying them can be both time-consuming and expensive.

As I come back to this project from time to time an experiment more with this method of dying I will come back and update the topic. Others of you who like to experiment with dying your own bone or like to work on knives on to give this a try, please use the information I've given as a starting point and come back and tell us what you have found and what you are able to come up with.
I would love it if somebody can perfect this process of dying bone to make it look like an antique knife handle, so we can all use it.

I look forward to more comments from members and I look forward to seeing the results some of you get with various dyes and bone or stag! Don't forget to experiment with stag. I didn't use stag in this project but I have experimented with it before.

So bring it on guys let's see what you got and what you can get!