[Jacob-list] more horn, supplies and working with

[Woodson Gannaway]

Hi,

I got a number of individual replies; I'll send this general info  
reply to the list and hope that's OK.

I'm an American who lived in Spain 1987-1994 and learned to work horn  
as a part of my work there. I worked for a master Canary knife maker,  
an older man who grew up in the trade and did everything marvelously  
well with few words, great economy of motion and in a simple and  
direct way. So forgive me if I assume some things are obvious when  
they are not. Now I live in NE China, city of Dalian, so the matter of  
shipping is not a given.

Horn: nature's thermoplastic, as one friend put it so well, provides  
beautiful articles that can be made with simple tools. Before plastic  
there was horn. After drying a few months it is cut to a smaller size  
and rough shape, heated to soften, then flattened in a vise between  
two steel plates. Hot it's soft, cool it's not, so after cooling it  
stays flat. It's easy to saw, file, drill, cut, carve and polish. So  
the basics of working with horn are no problem.

Size: for me at least, the little ones are useless. I'm looking for  
water buffalo horns here now and I tell people "the heavier the  
better" to help get the horns I want. If the outside surface is more  
or less even then a wall 3/8 inch or more thick is usable. My finished  
pieces are usually between 3/8 and 3/4 inch thick (after flattening  
and filing). In an older animal and male the horn will not be bone- 
filled for much of its length and will have more solid, not hollow  
horn material (and this tends to be thicker).

Price: Never gotten any in the U.S. In Spain it was a valuable part of  
the tradition so no one ever asked a penny for horns, and one person  
provided me with hundreds and hundreds of pounds over several years.  
He not only didn't ask for pay, he refused pay. So I gave him one of  
the best knives I ever made as a present.

Here I pay between a few cents and a dollar a pound for green horns  
with the bone, so far.

Color: for me, black, white, black and white striped are the most  
desirable. I'd be happy to experiment with browns. Amber (yellow)  
color is all I get here (was it bred for that?) and I have plenty,  
don't need any. These are from the normal domestic sheep and goats.  
I've never seen horn from the kind of sheep that you keep.

Shipping: Will the people who sometimes bring me books in their  
suitcase bring me horns? Don't know. I seldom go to the U.S. I think  
the days of shipping boxes overseas cheaply via the post office are  
gone. So that's open to suggestions.

Hope this is helpful, don't want it to get too long.

Thanks, Woodson