What can you use on a Powderhorn to prevent it from cracking?

[Ames]

Where was the crack? Spout end?

 

[Flinty Scot]

Given what a horn is made of...& what neatsfoot oil is made from...I'd be tempted to wipe mine w/ prime neatsfoot (NOT neatsfoot compound, which has other stuff in it).

 

[kje54]

I had mine frozen in carbonite so they will never age at all.

You beat me to it. LOL

 

[toot]

Here it is.

now that is a rely life like TREE RAT!!

 

[rp77469]

I have found if you don't fall on them they usually don't crack. No need to ask how long and how many broken horns that little piece of enlightenment took.

 

[Leadball loader]

I have my Maternal grandfathers powder horn he made sometime before he went to WW1. He stored black powder for reloading his cartridge gun but possibly started with a muzzle loader before he got that.
He went back in the service for WW2 and was killed in a plane crash in England.
There was still powder in the horn in the 60s until one of my brothers emptied it to set it off playing around. Only a One minor moth scar and dry horn surface roughness which I treated with bees wax.
Used to have a fiddle string plug that was lost so whittled a plug.
Don’t want to chance damaging it so I use a new made plain horn for my shooting.
LBL

 

[Professor flintlock]

Go to a drug store a get a small bottle of glycerine. Might have to ask the pharmacist. Rub a little on not real thick. Multiple thin coats are better than a thick one.

 

[Dale Lilly]

39 year old horn I made. Last winter we went to South Texas. On our return to Oklahoma, something had caused it to fall from about 7 1/2 feet onto a hardwood floor. It cracked near large end, spilled a little powder, but was an easy epoxy fix. It was a combination of cold [no heat in house] and the fall. Never had one crack any other time. Polecat