STABILIZING AND COLORING ANTLERS

hey this is James McClendon with JMC custom knives recently I was asked to do a video on how I get my antler handles look like I do of course you know a lot of times you'll find these antlers and they they come like this now this one come from a pet store and it's pretty sun-bleached so all these handles here were were sun-bleached so I'm going to go through the process of how I add color to these and make them give them another dimension if you will the process involves stabilizing which sure if you're not familiar with this cactus jeez this is uh sold for wood and there's other porous materials well Cantler is porous material and it happens to like the stabilization process very well someone walk you through the process of how to add color to these and get some dimension and of course that's going to add value to your project hey there's one other thing I wanted to touch on real quick it's when you pick pick out your antlers all antlers are created alike when you you know you look at a piece antler like this and you know it looks really good well one of the things you got to look at is what's on the inside and antlers are made up of two basic parts you got out hard outer shell and a spongy Center and when you've got two antler like this where there's pretty thin working it unstabilized is really a bad idea because if you're sanding it down you get into that pith there's there's no support to it it's just a big sponge I mean it also gonna soak up everything that touches it any liquid and so stabilization helps that a lot of things affect that with a deer it's died as they age his health those things can affect how those antlers grow so when you buy it on keep that in mind now on an antler base like this that pith only comes in usually about an inch and a half two inches over the base and all this down here is solid so you know keep that in mind when you're working it because you're gonna hit that when you're cleaning the center out for your handle tang or if you're doing a full tang you gotta keep all that in mind with at PSU you really don't want to say showing on your handle too much because it's not very attractive so let's get back to the process we're gonna start with wiping it down with some solvent just get that glue off okay next I got some letter done this is the alcohol based you can use the water I suppose you just need to let that drive over longer but the alcohol dries really fast I'm gonna start off with a light brown on the bottom and a dark brown on the top you can kind of see the way this stuff's acting this really soaking in so we're gonna let this set for a few minutes and then clean it up [Applause] [Applause] so I've got my antlers or they're dry now these were real really dense healthy antlers they do pretty good that's the that's the good thing about when you buy it lures like this that aren't wild he's dearer fed and they're fed high-protein diets are those that translate you know into really dense antlers which translates into a really good handle I'm seeing some cracks they didn't really they dive really didn't soak into d but there are a few little cracks in it so that's gonna give us some character and I cut it off because I'll use this on a another handle probably not this one but I'll put these on the front of the bigger bowie knives so we're gonna drop these into the stabilizing solution the cactus juice I'm drawback you now you might be noticing I don't have a glass top on this I bought this off of ebay and it had a glass stopper of acrylic top and I pulled it down in 25 inches and went inside holding it there come back out and a topic cracked like spider well welcome to find out suppose acrylic tops are aren't compatible with the resin so I went back and I made a new top out of Steel for it and someone draw it down and we're gonna hold it we're gonna hold it there for a little while and let it suck all the all the air out and we'll come back to in a minute you got it out of the oven it's ready for the next step which I'm gonna put some black dye on the top here you see how that dies really nothing fighting in 2d and that's kind of what you want to see all right so the next step is to put it on enough I've got this little Damascus kind of a trailing point style scanner forged up so here it is finished you can see how the cracks let the black dye soaked in kind of gave that some personality see how that brown dye bit in a little deeper than the black come around here oh no we just took that piece of bleached out in learned MASINT and I think pretty nice out of it so I hope that gave you some ideas

Channel: James Mcclendon

Views: 2,525

Rating: 4.9130435 out of 5

Keywords: blacksmith, bladesmith, knifemaking, bowie, hunting, knife

Id: 2vS1e6QL2DI

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2019