All About Pocket Knives

I have a question concerning cattle bones. I have a friend that ran upon some ole cattle bones out in the woods the other day, and I want to know if any of them can be used to make knife scales out of. If so I have a Boker 2 blade jack knife that i want to have the handles replaced on. Was thinking about trying it myself. Will the ole cattle bone be good for that? I was thinking aabout leaving it natural, and not dying them. Thanks for your help.

The ones usually used for knife handles are the shin bones.
They are the densest of the bones in a cow.

Let us see what you do with them!

Dale

Do the bones require any sort of special treatment before they can be utilized as knifescales? Do they need to be dried for a period of time, or perhaps boiled?
I live in cattle country and there's never a shortage of cattle bones to be had around here.

you can use the shin bones which are best. you can also use the bigger and longer hip bones if you cut them just right you can get a slab 5-6" long if they have been out in the woods for a while they should be weathered and have alot of fissures, I love bone like this, if you have any extra let me know, I used the last I had a couple months ago. I got those from a cow that had been whacked by a train. They made some wonderful handles.

This will help some new members I hope.

http://www.dog-training.com/sterilbone.htm ..

Bone : a natural handle material usually derived from shin bone of a cow. Bone is often given a surface texture, most commonly in the forms of pick bone, jigged bone or stag bone. Stag bone is bone material that is processed to look like genuine stag. Bone is naturally white in color, but is often dyed many different colors. Bone is one of the most common knife handle materials.

Hey Ken,
Thanks for sharing the info. Great help, my friend.

philco wrote:Do the bones require any sort of special treatment before they can be utilized as knifescales? Do they need to be dried for a period of time, or perhaps boiled?
I live in cattle country and there's never a shortage of cattle bones to be had around here.

I have heard of boiling the bones in water & TSP to remove the flesh.
I have an elk leg bone in the freezer that I need to treat & cut into slabs.

I know camel & giraffe bones are available from some of the knife supply companies.
They are usually dyed and are quite pretty.

Dale

Yes, boiling in TSP is what's done. Many double boil then dry. Some jig the bone then dye and others dye then jig. Many use Rit dye in boiling water, but I have some dye from a local turner's and pen making store that uses denatured alcohol rather than water. Seems like denatured alcohol will penetrate the bone more easily.

I haven't figured out how I want to use this stuff (wood dye) yet with the alcohol. I'd rather do something other than just dunk and soak.

This made me think Hukk.!!!!

What about a pressure cooker with the dye of a strong YELLOW.

I have a bone I could send you. You cut it for some scales. Place it in the pressure cooker.

Now you know I love lemmone YELLOW.

That Stellar Sea Cow bone is well over 250 years old. They went extinct in the late 1700's just about 30 years after they were first discovered. Dying with Rit dye is tricky - you don't always get the color you start out with. So you need a supply of the same bone to experiment with.

Hukk; Seems like denatured alcohol will penetrate the bone more easily.

Prehaps cooking any alcohol in a pressure cooker would not be safe.

I was thinking of you useing this Stellar Sea Cow bone to dye my bone YELLOW. If you had that color. Then in a pressure cooker (To penatrate the dye). I was just thinking that would get good looking handles. I did not think old bones woud be bad. My feeling was they would be dryer than new bones. So the dye would take to it better.

Thank you for your come back too. I could PM you but this way others can learn with me. Do you like my idea about the pressure cooker at all ?

No, denatured alcohol would be hazardous to put in a pressure cooker. It's very flammable and when heated the fumes under pressure can be easily ignited.

If I have to heat a flammable I use hot water that was heated away from the flammable. I have experience in the semiconductor industry creating processes using heated flammables. I don't recommend heating flammables, especially if you have no training in doing so. The fumes can be easily ignited by any ignition source. I don't recommend it!

Denatured Alcohol is grain alcohol or ethanol which has been made toxic by adding methanol or a dozen other additives (about 10%) to make it undrinkable.

I had a fellow old timer tell me to dye bone with coffee.I tried it with mixed results.Kinda a appaloosa effect which might be ok.I've used leather dye and it took pretty good.It's fun to experiment ,but dyed and jigged bone is pretty reasonable to purchase and a heck of a lot less mess.

I dye giraffe bone with the alcohol based dyes and I have both vacuum and pressure chambers set up to assist in penetration. I can alternate between 29 inches of vacuum and 70 PSI pressure. If anyone wants to send the bone to me with the dye I can do it for nothing more than the cost of the return postage.

The system is on my lower car shop floor so it doesn't take away from my shop time other than a few minutes to start the vacuum pump or compressors....

I do not have any yellow dye but if you want to pay for some I will provide the alcohol and do the dying for the extra dye. I need the pieces to be cut to no longer than about 4.8 inches and the best dye job can be done with the bone cut close to the actual size to be used to get the best penetration. Shorter bone is better as I have tall thin jars that will hold pieces cut to scale size about 4.8 inches long or shorter.

Here are links for alcohol dye and a short tutorial for dying from the same site...

dye: http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/Merc ... _Code=CLWA

tutorial: http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/Merc ... einfo.html

PM sent.

How can any one pass this up ?