carved horn

[hawkthrower]

A couple of weeks ago at the suggestion of a friend I started on a horn to be done completely with hand tools. He suggested carving a horn with regular carving tools and the more I thought about it the more intrigued I became.
He said my tools would have to be very sharp so after 2 days of sharpening I gave it a try. After 2 more days of sharpening I started cutting. Mostly I did alot more sharpening than I did cutting.
For those of you that might ever need to lose some blood I would offer one extreme warning.
Dull tools will skip off of horn faster than greased lighting but they will still cut skin quite easily.
After 2 weeks of carving filing and cussing here is the result.
15 in. around the curve
2 7/8 in. base plug
handmade drawer pull finial
and the only piece not done by hand is the hollow, turned base plug of curly maple.
Hope you like it.
Ron

 

[AZ Muzzle]

Ron,

Excellent job! I love the colors. :bow:

Mark B

 

[billk]

Very nice carving design.

 

[GreyWhiskers]

Very nice work. :thumbsup: Thanks for sharing. GW

 

[George]

Excellent. I'm more than a little willing to sacrifice a little of your skin to be able to see such a beautiful horn.

Spence

 

[longshot47]

The contoured petals around the throat are a very tasty effect. Well done :thumbsup:

 

[chance]

WoW!!! That is Great!!

 

[crowkiller]

Very nice looking horn.
Did you make the brass ring or buy it?

 

[lonehunter]

Very Nice!
You have come a long way in a few short months, keep em coming!
As Spence said, Your skin is a moderate price for us to pay to see such fine work! :bow: :v :haha:

 

[paulvallandigham]

I like this very much. Great Art work on that neck, and some original ideas shown. Thank you for sharing it with us. :hatsoff:

May I ask, how do you brace the horn when you are carving the neck? :idunno:

 

[Sunkmanitu Tanka]

Just awesome! a real piece of art! congrats!

 

[MSW]

fantastic!

great looking horn!

 

[agill]

Very nice!

 

[hawkthrower]

Thank you all very much for your comments.
The brass drawer pull was made from a length of hex stock and a piece of round stock for the ring. I annealed the stock and then split the hex before placing it in the plug. Then all you do is bend the two splits over to lock it in place.

Paul, as you probably know holding the horn while trying to hand carve it is one of the big challenges of doing a horn like this. I used two 25 lb bags of shot to brace the horn along with a short piece of 4x4 screwed to the bench as kind of a backstop for the horn.
Ron

 

[David Shaw]

She's a beaut! You should be very pleased.

 

[anvil1231]

Beautiful work. I really like it, :hatsoff:

 

[Capt. Fred]

Wow that's sweet. Like Paul said, you stepped out and did something a bit different. Not many folks can pull that off as well as you did on this. Really, really nice in every respect. Thanks! :thumbsup:

 

[shmrck1]

Hawkthrower,
Outstanding piece of craftsmanship and Art!

 

[srspicer]

Ditto the above comments, Outstanding!

Scott

 

[JamesG]

Very nice carving design.