asbone

Bone & Antler Carving

In preparation for carving antler tokens for my Tablut set, I have begun carving some bone to develop my skills. I still haven't carved any antler yet, but I'm sure most bone carving techniques can easily be applied to antler. I'm having a great time with it, and I find that it requires few tools and doesn't really take very long to turn out a nice peice. I also like the durability of bone. Whatever I make, I can expect it to take some abuse and still last a long time.

Bone & antler carving requires surprisingly few tools. You need a fine-toothed hacksaw, a wood chisel, a wood rasp, a set of mini files and a hobby knife set. I already had a hobby knife set lying around, and I picked up all the other tools you see pictured here for a total cost of about $50 at my local hardware store. The bones pictured are pork shoulder scraps that I got for free from my local grocery store meat counter. For my first bone carving project, I carved a Viking figure, who stands 1 7/8" tall.

It doesn't take very long to turn out a nice piece. Pictured at right is my little Viking figure after only about an hour of work. I started with a pork shoulder scrap, which I cleaned up and boiled for about 2 hours to get off all the tiny chewy bits. I sectioned it as seen above with a hack saw and did some rough shaping with the wood chisel/ rasp combo tool. Then I did everything else with one of the mini files. I not only used the face of it to file with, but I also used the flat edge to compact and scrape the bone and the sharp point to scratch. As you can see, these techniques rendered a clearly discernable figure with a sword and round shield in about an hour. Then I continued working with the file to carve out the conical helm, face and beard in about another hour and do some finishing work. In all, it took about 2 1/2 hours.

I am also collecting ideas for other projects in bone & antler. If you carve bone & antler, please e-mail me and share your ideas. I'll keep updating this web site as I make progress toward my Tablut set. For those of you who may be wondering what Tablut is, check out this web site.

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