Natural horn colors

[jbwilliams3]

Howdy, folks. Let me first say that I have been eating up the information on this forum for the past year. I haven't had to really ask questions because they've all been answered thoroughly somewhere in past threads!

My question is, what natural horn colors would have been available to 18th century Virginians or other Easterners?

I made my first horn out of one of those cheap, highly-polished BLACK horns most likely from India. It's what I had available so I altered it as appropriately as I could. I like it enough since I put work into it. But were black horns ever available in these parts?

I have a raw horn laying around that I plan on making useable the next time I get an afternoon free. This horn is GREY. I think it will make a pretty swell powder horn, but again I don't know about the color. I will post pictures of all my gear for critique whenever I get my digital camera working.

Finally, when I get a hold of a light colored horn, I'm going to have to decide whether or not to "age" it. I love the antique stain coloring, but how long it would take for a horn to naturally take on this hew? My buddy's father has a couple horns he's been hunting and trekking with for nigh on thirty years, and it's still nothing like the yellow or orange I see on a lot of "antiqued" horns.

 

[Ridge]

I have a reference to an indian bringing in a shot pouch and a "dark" horn. Is dark black? I don't know.

The grey one could always be dyed.

I don't think they will ever take on that orange color. I have a set of horns here from the early 1800's and they just look brown.

 

[Bountyhunter]

Your colors-and shapes-are going to vary according to the breeds of cattle that they came from. They can vary from white to black and all variations in between. I have seen a lot of original horns in museums, and they are not orange. They started out some light shade and then dirtied up, but they are not orange.

Remember that the early cattle were either dairy or dual purpose breeds and lots of them had black horns. Mexican cattle and longhorns had whitish to blackish horns. Also for the sake of trivia in the movies, Hereford cattle were not imported to this country until the 1890's. The thin white Hereford horns are not historically correct for any period before 1890.

 

[omarick1948]

Sure there were dark and even black horns! A fellow in the early days, who made his own powder horn, wouldn't of worried about what color his cow horn was especially, as his horn was a daily tool!

There are many examples of dark and black cow powder horns in collections and museums with the yellow or orange coloring. Almost all of the old original powder horns we see in collections etc. natually turn color a little with age, but Horners also used many methods to dye their horns, just like today. I have even seen old originals dyed red, green and even blue.

 

[AeroncaTAL]

In Dresslar's book 'The Engraved Powder Horn' (a wonderful book it is!), the colors of the original horns vary from a light white/yellow to orange. On some of the horns it is obvious that the necks were stained a dark brown, and the scrimshaw is "inked" with different colors. The wood on the butt plugs varies from unfinished to what might be varnish. Some of the plugs were painted. An original F&I horn I have inspected still had bits of paint on the butt plug. The horn itself wasn't yellow, but an ugly greenish tint...
Scott

 

[omarick1948]

This is pretty involved, but different from the RIT dye method!...Mad Monk's mineral horn coloring.
http://members.tripod.com/~shoot7/madmonk.html

 

[paulvallandigham]

HOrner75: I tried to look at the madmonk link, by cutting and pasting this reference, but nothing came up. Is there an error in your typing? I am thinking it might need a " www." between the http:// and Members. No?

 

[Bon Sauvage]

Paul maybe the site was down when you tried it. I just gave it a shot and it worked great. Ogre

 

[AeroncaTAL]

Came up ok for me...
Scott

 

[soggy]

Most horns that I have seen in local museums were whatever the family cow happened to be wearing at the time of her demise. Up here (that's north & east of your location) it was the same as everywhere else, nothing was wasted. When old "Bessie" couldn't produce milk anymore and was too old to pull a plow or wagon, she had to be replaced. Everything was considered useful and this included the horns. I doubt that any consideration was given to what the horn looked like ie. colour/shape etc.
Most of the "ageing/antiqueing" was a result of everyday use and included dirt,scraches,and dings.
Here's three examples of mid 1800s plain working mans horns. One does have some designs cut into it the other two were left plain.

 

[BrownBear]

That Mad Monk link has a nasty popup on it. I've got a potent popup blocker in my system, and it beat it.

Won't be going there again. Phishing is for phools.

 

[omarick1948]

That Mad Monk link has a nasty popup on it. I've got a potent popup blocker in my system, and it beat it.

Won't be going there again. Phishing is for phools.

Huh?....Just tried it and no pop-up?..... :hmm:

 

[Claude Mathis]

That Mad Monk link has a nasty popup on it. I've got a potent popup blocker in my system, and it beat it.

Won't be going there again. Phishing is for phools.

I don't use a pop-up blocker and I didn't see a pop-up on that site.

 

[BrownBear]

I'll go try it again. In fact I'll open another tab and do it now while I'm typing this. I've got the latest Firefox with its popup blocker turned all the way up.

Yup. Got it again. The popup is from b.casalemedia.com-Whose Sexy Legs Are These?

Here's the link I saved from the original post.

 

[BrownBear]

BTW-

For years we ran red herford/limosine cross on our place in the Southwest. Since we dehorn everything while branding, we didn't have the chance to collect many horns. This is the horn from a steer that managed to slip through without dehorning, then hid out in the brush long enough to grow up while all his "class mates" were shipped off to the calf sales. He pulled all that off, but eventually we managed to catch up with him and turn him into steaks for our own table.

The last few years the market has paid extra for black angus, based on the percentage of a calf lot that's all black regardless of bloodlines. So in recent years we've been mounting black bulls on everything with four legs. That's true all over the West, so US horn color variety is going to get pretty limited. Lots of exotics being raised in our area, but there's some pretty funny looking horns on them.

 

[Claude Mathis]

I'll go try it again. In fact I'll open another tab and do it now while I'm typing this. I've got the latest Firefox with its popup blocker turned all the way up.

Yup. Got it again. The popup is from b.casalemedia.com-Whose Sexy Legs Are These?

Here's the link I saved from the original post.

Hmm, I can't make the pop-up appear and I don't see anything in the code on that page that would trigger a pop-up. Very strange.

 

[BrownBear]

Yeah. Really strange. I don't know enough about the web and code to guess what's going on. I scanned my computer for bugs with the latest update of Norton AntiiVirus, and it didn't find anything, but that doesn't mean I'm not packing.

 

[BrownBear]

Watusi cattle are about the strangest of the strange. Anyone for a straight powder horn that's 2 to 3 feet long and at least 6" at the base?

 

[soggy]

Watusi cattle are about the strangest of the strange. Anyone for a straight powder horn that's 2 to 3 feet long and at least 6" at the base?

I think that's what Davy and the rest of them fellars down in Texas use to make "priming horns" outta.......... :wink:

 

[BrownBear]

The one that put me over the fence, his horns could probably hold about 6 pounds of powder each. Sounds like it might take both to make a one-shot Texas primer. :wink: