Current project

[ridjrunr]

This is my current project the plug is black walnut,hollowed out about  .625" deep with a Forstner bit. Mite try and add a band or two. I have never tried that yet but am thinking it might be nice on this one also thinking of an applied tip.?

More pictures to come.

[greyhunter]

Looking good pard! I like those style horns. I have a few horns to do also, now that I have a lathe it won't be such a problem to make the plugs! Are you going to do some scrim or leave it plain?

[ridjrunr]

I have never tried scrim so that is why I was thinking along some of the horns in Sibleys book on southern banded horns. Even though I have a good supply of these horns and they were pretty cheap, I just don't want to screw it up. Sometime I need to practice on some scrap horn. In fact I "developed" a scrap horn this week trying to flatten it. It was smaller than this horn you see here, most likely a practice pc.now.
How are you weathering the storm ok GH?

[Bigsmoke]

Looking good.  An applied tip would probably work pretty good on that horn.  Will need to slim down the front of the horn a bit, though.
I like the decorative groves on the baseplug.  Very subtle.
Never heard of a Super Shop machine.  One of the many Shopsmith clones, I would guess.  Looks to be pretty hefty.  Makes life better without cluttering up a small shop with a lot of stand alone tools.  I have been using Shopsmiths for 30 years now, and I do believe I have worn out a few in that time.
John

[ridjrunr]

Thanks for the input big smoke, I may not have big enough stock material laying around to do an applied tip I,ll have to do some diggin in my stuff. If I don't ,then I,ll do a tapered panelled  tip.
Yes, there is quite a bit of material to rasp down on the forward section but that's good,I think it gives me options.
The shop smith is a Smithy product out of Michigan. I lucked into this setup via an estate sale in ID. The more I use it the more I like it. It's got great range of rpm,from 36 to 7200 in 3 different ranges. The only attachment I don't have for it is the bandsaw that runs off a spline shaft on the left side of the workhead.
Anyways, I need to make a mandrel for turning bands. (Baseball bat)

[ridjrunr]

Well,the mandrel went pretty good and turning the bands wasn't too bad but I really need a better sharpening system for my lathe tools. It became obvious that as the tool dulled it chipped the horn rather than cut it.
I ended up with 5 bands and this is one idea of application.
Tomarrow I will do the forward section of the horn, slimming it down and sculpt a tip before deciding on the bands and arrangement of bands.

[greyhunter]

Thanks for asking Ridjrnr, not bad at all where I am for snow. Maybe 5-6 inches, very dry light snow, no power loss, but some high winds all day today. Temp going down to 8 or so in the am. Spent the day working on my old sled, after I cleaned up the driveway of snow. Farther northeast they got their butts handed to them, 24+ inches and many w/o power. Glad I'm not a Connecticut Yankee!

[gunmaker]

With that lathe there, a turned antler pour spout mite be a thought....Tom

[Roaddog]

Your doing very fine work there Ridjrunr. Thanks for taking us through the steps.

[ridjrunr]

A two pc applied tip is the way I decided to go. Digging through a box, I found a pc of whitetail antler about 1.5" long and turned the spout collar with that. It was turned using a pen mandrel and then I counter bored each end of the collar .375 deep x .500 dia.
Then the rasp work began,first doing the part that goes in the collar and then thinning down the forward half of the horn so it was a smaller diameter than the collar. All of the work on the horn was by hand with rasp,file and scraper only.
Now I need to find another pc of antler or horn to turn the actual spout with.

[ridjrunr]

Those three pictures ended up in reverse order.
Here is how it looks until I can turn the spout section.
Also, I am thinking that the white band is a little too thick and will try and get it back on the wooden mandrel and thin it a bit before applying.

[sse]

Creativity in progress...very nice.

[rickevans]

Nice project there. Thanks for the pics and explanations.

[ridjrunr]

Well it was a learning experience,I will say that.
I made a dye bath with onion skins and soaked the horn for about 40 minutes.
All connections are sealed with beeswax and pinned with thorns and toothpicks.
The staple was a finishing nail.
These last pix where taken with an old camera 2.0 mega pix,( not so mega).
If they are fuzzy I may do other pix later when the new camera gets home.
Comments,thoughts and concerns welcome
Ridjrunr

[ridjrunr]

Two more