First attempt at a Powder Horn

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The Appalachian

Feral American
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Took a few minutes off of the rifle build and did a horn for it. Never carved or etched a horn before, but did my research and dove in with both feet. One picture is what I started with from Buffalo Arms, second pic is just now after cooking an hour in a hot british black tea and onion skin soup.

No ryme or reason or meaning to the engrailing, just sort of copied some stuff I thought looked good from some other horns. The wrap around scrimshaw is Betsy Ross's 13 stars, Ben Franklin's "Join, or Die", five Bible verses that are important to me, my name in "military scribe" font and the date the horn was made, the last couple sentences of Patrick Henry's famous 2nd Virginia Convention "Liberty or Death" speech in "Boston Font", and a very crude map of Virginia, northern Carolina, and the Shawnee territory just to the west, as known in the 1770ish time period
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Took a few minutes off of the rifle build and did a horn for it. Never carved or etched a horn before, but did my research and dove in with both feet. One picture is what I started with from Buffalo Arms, second pic is just now after cooking an hour in a hot british black tea and onion skin soup.

No ryme or reason or meaning to the engrailing, just sort of copied some stuff I though looked good from some other horns. The wrap around scrimshaw is Betsy Ross's 13 stars, Ben Franklin's "Join, or Die", five Bible verses that are important to me, my name in "military scribe" font and the date the horn was made, the last couple sentences of Patrick Henry's famous 2nd Virginia Convention "Liberty or Death" speech in "Boston Font", and a very crude map of Virginia, northern Carolina, and the Shawnee territory just to the west, as known in the 1770ish time periodView attachment 138093View attachment 138094.
beautiful. better than I could do.
 
Holy Cow! This was your FIRST attempt at making a powder horn?! I have been making my own horns for the past three years and I can't do anything that detailed or nice. Great job!
Well, it was certainly a learning curve of experiments and I learned a lot from start to finish. Etching lettering is nothing short of a pain. I think now the next horn will go a LOT smoother than this one did.
 
You have done well.
I think I'm most happy about nailing the dye color the first time. I agonized over that more than anything. Couldn't find the powdered RIT dye that all my research said was most popular and didnt want to wait to order it, so I just said heck with it and threw the kitchen sink at it. Got the right color, seems to be more color fast than I thought it would be. I'm happy happy.
 
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