I t has only been half as long from my last post about this box, as it was between that and the first one, so perhaps that is an improvement. Also, interestingly, I saw that the last episode was posted on the 19th of October; it is now the 19th of December, (though it is likely to be later before I actually finish this).
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| The box with the first pieces of carved bone in place At this point, they are only stuck on with tape |
When I began the bone border, I just fished around in one of my drawers and found a couple bone plates that were left from some restoration project. They happened to be the perfect length and width for my needs, so I happily used them. I realised, though, that I would need a lot more to finish. I first looked "on line" (where everything is found, nowadays) and ordered some plates of bone but they turned out to be too thick, or not thick enough to split, and not really long enough either.
The last time I wanted bones, I had gone to a pet shop where one can find bones intended for large dogs to chew. These have been cleaned and bleached and are all nice and white with no mess to deal with; absolutely perfect for someone who does not want to spend a couple days trying to clean bones. Since they are natural animal (cow) bones, however, there is nothing flat or straight about them, therefore, there is still a lot of work to get flat straight usable plates from of them
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| Bones ready for slicing A couple had two faces straight enough to yield plates from. I wound up using ten of these bones |
The first step involves finding the "flattest" (read least curved) side and then grinding that down to be perfectly flat and true, and wide enough to yield a strip of the width that is needed. For the first couple of bones, I did this by hand on a sheet of coarse sandpaper, glued to a plank, however, I soon realised I would be making a career out it so I switched to using a disk sander. That made the process go faster, but I still had to do the final bit of flattening by hand the way I started. The machine just got the bulk of the material out of the way in a quicker manner.
Once the bones had flat faces to them, thin (+/-2mm) plates had to be cut off. This was done with a saw for cutting metal. Bone is much harder than most timbers, but nothing so close to as hard as iron or steel, so the saw made fairly quick work of cutting the plates. Most bones only give one or two pieces that are wide enough and can come from the entire length of bone. (+/- 160mm) In a couple cases, the bone was thick enough to yield two plates from the same side, but this was the exception, not the norm. Usually, by the time you get a flat face, you are already running into the hollow core. A lot of shorter pieces could still be gotten from what was left of the bones, but others actually only yielded a single piece the entire length. I wanted long pieces so there would not be a bunch of joined up lengths. The idea was for a single strips on the vertical and two for each horizontal row. After going back three times to the pet shop, however, I ultimately had to give up and join up some shorter pieces for the back, because I depleted their bone stock, but this is getting ahead of the story.
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| Several plates cut and joined straight on one edge. The entire box used more than 3,5 metres of bone |
After the "plates" are sliced off they still needed to be trimmed down, this first involved cutting one side straight, and paying attention to how it would best produce the widest piece possible, since most pieces were wider on the ends than in the middle. After one edge was straightened, a parallel line was drawn along the other edge and then cut again. All trimming and width cutting, as well as end trimming was done with the iron saw. A file was used to true up the edges, (much like running a piece of timber over a jointer) once it has been cut. Steffen happened to stop in one day as I was cutting, so he made a video of me doing it, which is below.
That sounds like lots of work, but at this point, we are just getting started, because next comes the actual work of the carving. All the preparatory work is not really even thought about when one views the finished piece. This is usually the case no matter what sort of creation one is viewing; no one gives much thought to what must have gone into its making, and only gives a "like" "dislike" or indifferent response to the visible final product.
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| Comparing bone to holly I contemplating using wood instead of bone but the difference was a lot; in favour of bone |
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| A still from a video of my trying to do this one-handed Here you can see one of the tools that I made to do this |
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| Design inspiration came from these two boxes that I saw in Cluny |
For carving, the first step was to create the outside border. This was first done with a marking gauge and then with a tool to widen and deepen the groove to half-round profile. After that, the piece was divided with pencil marks and the design was laid out. I first tried using some woodcarving tools but they dulled very quickly, so I repurposed a couple files, and bought some "sticks" of machine steel for making metalworking tools. These I ground and fashioned into suitable tools for carving bone. Bone carving is quite different from wood carving. With bone, you are basically scratching or chipping away the surface. It can be shaved off, but only in very thin layers. It is meticulous, time consuming work, but the payoff is the crisp detail and smooth polished surface that results. Much like carving hardwood such as cherry or good mahogany, no sanding is needed to finish it up. The bone can even buff up to a nice sheen and requires no additional finish
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| A piece of paper hides the unfinished section One is always eager to see more progress than he has actually achieved. |
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| Now it is starting to look like a finished box |
At this point, however, there are no pieces on the other end, the back or the lid, so still quite some work to do. Additionally, as already mentioned, in these pictures the bones are just temporarily stuck on with bits of double-sided tape.
In the next post I will show what I did for the lid and the interior of the box; stay tuned.
Videre Scire
