Deer Shed Antler Handled Steak Knives; Scrimshaw, Ivory, Turquoise, & Stainless Steel Damascus

What a beautiful creation Mark! Wow….

-- Carl Rast, Pelion, SC

They still look as good as they did this morning on the blog. Boy, that’s luck, huh?

-- Thos. Angle, Owyhee Design, Oregon

Another great project Mark. This is very impressive as usual.

-- Max "Desperado", Salt Lake City, UT

Great project Mark. You going to be able to get it out to the customer, with all of the ice storms on the way.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

A man of many talents. Great project.

-- http://www.woodsongsfurniture.com

Mark, another great looking project.

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

Beautiful work!

-- Check out my new website! http://www.theeasellife.com

Yes Mark, you have took another big leap towards your goal with this project. I might give this knife thing a try. Thanks Mark!

-- " All Things At First Appear Difficult"

Wow…amazing! I love the “live” edge on the top and bottom!

-- Women love me.....trees fear me

awsome…..

-- Brian's Table Top Toys http://home.mountaincable.net/~bgraham/

Fantastic! You are a heck of a craftsman. Really love those knives and the box – wow!

-- Just another woodworker

Great creftsmanship, Mark!

What type of glue did you use for the turquoise inlay? I’ve done something like that with two-part epoxy.

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

Impressive! I like this a lot and wish I was doing this kind of work.

-- Ron, Twain Harte, Ca. Portable on site Sawmill Service http://westcoastlands.net/Sawmill.html http://westcoastlands.net/SawBucks2/phpBB3

Like I said Mark, I know you would’nt like to do the same thing every day, so maybe come out here to Michigan, teach me to Scrim and you go back to what you were doing and I’ll give you credit for everyone I sell, promise. Of course I’ll give you your usual say 2-3 % commission or we could talk about that. Oh almost forgot, beautiful work as usual. mike

-- Mike. Profisher50@yahoo.com

Beautiful!
You’re going to need a lot of antlers, when more people see this.

-- -** You are never to old to set another goal or to dream a new dream ****************** Dick, & Barb Cain, Hibbing, MN. http://www.woodcarvingillustrated.com/gallery/member.php?uid=3627&protype=1

that’s what I was thinking, Dick.. I’d better tell Rick to keep his eyes open!

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

All I can say Mark is, YOU’RE GOOD!!!

-- Tom, Surfside Beach, SC - Romans 8:28

you all are so kind to me. I can see why I am so addicted to being an LJ’er. I think Wife is about to start up a website for recovering LJ addicts (she thinks I check in too often). I told her that there wouldn’t be any members, since none of us want “help” yet. Then the term “intervention” was floated around.

We are in the middle of an ice storm, so I can only check the computer every few hours when I crank up the generator, a left over item from my Y2K preparations. Remember that one?

The glue I use for the turquoise chips inlay is CA glue, both thin, and medium viscosity. I have tried epoxy, but it creates bubbles when it mixes, and those are ugly in inlay chips. The only way to use epoxy for such things I have found is to use long-curing mixes, and pour it in a vacuum chamber, or let it drip down a long thin channel before it fills the void. Still, there are voides.

I fill the inlayed area with chips and dust carefully first, and then float some Thin CA glue into the cavity and let it cure WITHOUT activator. After about an hour, I hit it with Activitator. Let it sit for about half an hour,, and then fill it again, and reglue, and repeat the process, until the voids are filled.

Then I sand it all flat with a belt sander, and sand up through the grits, and then burnish mostly with worn out 400 grit paper on the oribital sander, and then hand sand with #0000 steel wool. Then, I saturate it with Danish Oil, let it cure for 24 hours, and then put a few light coats of Deft Satin Lacquer, and then hand rub it out flat with #0000 steel wool.

Nothing is easy and quick, but the look is hard to beat. I actually liked this lettering style better than the carved letters I did on the first set of knives. I was looking for something different, and I just happened to glance on the shelf and noticed my storage container of turquoise, and then idea sunk in.

The Danish oil gives the walnut it’s deep luster, while the Lacquer protects the wood, and does some grain filling, and gives it that smooth warm buttery feel to the touch.

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flint Hill's Artisan

Thanks Mike for the offer to help, it would be fun working with you, whether you are joking, or not. BUT, we have to wait and see if there are any more steak knives to build.

As for antlers: I am always looking for more. They are given to me quite frequently, as most hunters and ranchers don’t really know what to do with them. After you’ve got a bunch of mounts already, and the wife doesn’t want any more deer heads hanging around, they sort of just pile up. After seeing me put them to use, they sometimes gift them to me for my work.

There is actually a network of folks that work hard to gather Shed Antlers. They did an article on my cane and knife work some time back.

Here is a link to the articles:
http://shedantler.net/archives/2006/12/27/walking-cane-with-shed-antler-handle/

http://shedantler.net/archives/2006/12/27/projects-made-from-damaged-shed-antlers/

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flint Hill's Artisan

Y2K——of all the places I expected that to come up—-it was not in a MARK DeCOU posting—-or anywhere on lj’s for that matter….to funny…but glad you were ready!!!

ANOTHER GREAT POST—-that is why I check everyday…great surprises…beautiful work..

-- Matt, Napa, CA...119 days to sanity...

Beautiful work, the box and the knives. I also like the classification you gave – refined rustic. A style that really strikes a chord with me. Great project to showcase your talent across disciplines.

-- I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso -- http://snbcreative.wordpress.com/

Scott: Refined rustic isn’t really a term I developed. It is a genre of cabin furnishings for folks that are tired of living with log furniture, especially the kind that falls apart when used, and has rough bumpy brushed on finishes. For people that have tried to clean a house with rough hewn interior siding, or dusted log furniture, they understand. The stuff looks great when it is delivered, but after about 5 years of dust bunnies and rag dust rag fragments, it starts to look dirty.

Refined rustic is sort of like normal furniture, but there is a rough edge, a toughness. There really isn’t any type of furniture that is special to Log Homes, as the magazines show everything from modern-contemporary, to 18th Century Antiques in Log Home photo shoots. But, it is the type of thing you would like if you had a cabin in the mountains, regardless of where your house is, but just not rustic. My work is not rustic, so refined-rustic fits better.

When I showed my Refined-Rustic work at the Western Design Conference, I heard that sort of comment all week from folks looking for furniture. They would rub their hand across the finish, and comment that it wouldn’t grab their dust rag and pull out fibers of the cloth. These are things I think about when building a piece of furniture. I grew up in a house almost completely filled with my dad’s functional-art furniture, and so I learned what it was like to dust, or clean, or move the heavy pieces. The type of thing I think through pretty thoroughly when I am designing a piece.

There were pieces at the Western Design Conference that were pretty, but they wouldn’t last long in a living enviroment, if they did actually make the road trip to the house. I saw one guy unload his table, he had built a 2×4 skeleton to hold it up in the trailer, as the bouncing of the table down the road would have broken it to pieces.

I hauled a large rental truck of furniture all the way to Cody and back, and didn’t have to adjust a single door, or drawer when I got home. But, all of that care and attention to detail does make it expensive to build because of all of the time it takes, that you can’t see while something is sitting on a platform at an art show. That is why I consider myself a functional-artist, not an artist. I consider the functionality, and will modify the art idea to make the piece “livable”.

I saw a bench recently with a trestle leg stretcher butt glued to the legs with a single pocket screw in each end. I am sure that if I sat on the bench, and shifted my weight around, or pushed it around as if I was vacuuming, it wouldn’t last long, despite how pretty it is. Those are the type of things to consider when building something that lasts, whether it is rustic, refined rustic, or contemporary.

I visited a guy awhile back when he had an art showing of his log rustic furniture. He used the typical style of pencil sharpener cut tenons, and drilled mortises, and then shot a trim nail in each joint. He used wet enough wood when he built it that the tenons had already shrunk up and were loose in his mortises. If a finish nail went wild, and came out of the wood, he just bent it over, and kept shooting. His prices were low, to the point that he barely covered the cost of the materials. I asked about it, and he said that he was retired and just having fun. Ok. I found out later that a guy came through the show and bought everything he had, and ordered about that much more, for his store to resell it. So, no matter what a person makes, there seems to be a market for it. Maybe that’s the moral of the story, and I should stop fussing around.

Gotta stop, before the word counters start poking fun at me again.
M

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flint Hill's Artisan

Keep them words coming, Mark!

-- -** You are never to old to set another goal or to dream a new dream ****************** Dick, & Barb Cain, Hibbing, MN. http://www.woodcarvingillustrated.com/gallery/member.php?uid=3627&protype=1

That’s 802173..and counting

-- http://www.woodsongsfurniture.com