Charles Long bottled his own scrimshaw – literally! This is how it was done:
Charles writes:
“ Faux Bone becomes flexible for about 25 seconds when heated. That’s howlong you have to roll it up, stuff it, and try to flatten it out inside the bottle.
Scrimshaw Techniques: With Gallery of Contemporary Artists
Jim Steven’s guide is a dazzling showcase of this uniquely American art form. The pages are filled with tips, techniques, and insights that both educate and demonstrate the steps to creating authentic and beautiful scrimshaw. An examination of ivory includes a wide range of alternative natural and man-made ivory substitutes, including bone, horn, and nuts. Over 200 color photos, this step-by-step guide addresses scrimshaw tools, patterns, inking, and inlays.
Jim’s second book “Advanced Scrimshaw Techniques
deeper into scrimshaw techniques including color scrimshaw, using power tools, ivory carving with hand and power tools, and practices in the care, conservation, repair, and restoration of ivory scrimshaw objects.
NOTE: We’re currently sold out of our scrimshaw kits, but we’re heading out to get more materials, and should be actively selling kits again by the third week in August, 2012. If you can’t wait ’til then, please visit our friends on the west coast Boone Trading Co. (boonetrading.com) for similar kits. Tell them Scrimshaw.com sent you – they are very nice people and a pleasure to work with.
Create a piece of history with scrimshaw! Scrimshaw is known as the “true American artform”. Using basic tools and whale teeth or bone, sailors would wile away their idle time creating beautiful works of art, from their own observations, imagination or from artwork of the day. Today, with finer points and better polishing techniques, the level of detail has become stunning. Can’t draw? No problem! Our kit comes with complete instructions so you can transfer nearly any image onto the supplied mammoth ivory or other materials to create your own work of art to wear, give as a gift or sell!
Our scrimshaw kits have everything you need to get started in this fascinating art.
You can easily learn how to scrimshaw with this complete kit. Not intended for children under 12.
We offer a thirty day money back guarantee on our products – even if you’ve tried it and decided you don’t have the patience for it. “Why would you want a used product back?” you may ask. The answer is simple: we can sand down and polish most of the ivory and re-use it elsewhere (for inlay, jewelry, etc.). If you decide you wish to return the product within thirty days, here’s what you need to do:
simply email aperkins@scrimshaw.com and request an RMA# (Return Material Authorization Number). Once you have this, return EVERYTHING to us (yes, even the pieces you’ve scrimmed), and we will refund your money, less shipping and handling. US only. Sorry, no export.
Looking for options after I finish the kraken – something to put on the 1.5″x3″ bone blank I had stabilized (will summarize my findings on stabilizing shortly). Any ideas?
Need some inspiration for creating a piece of scrimshaw, a drawing or a painting? The Scrimshander’s Secret Scrapbook of Whaling Era Illustrations is over 180 images from the 19th and early 20th centuries with sea-faring and whaling images originally created as woodcuts, lithographs drawings and paintings. These illustrations cover the range from catastrophes – where boatfuls of sailors get overturned by angry whales to the fabled “Kraken” – the giant octapus reaching out of the depths to take down the hapless ship! With these period illustrations, you are sure to find inspiration for your own masterpiece on what ever medium you choose: mammoth ivory, piano keys, canvas, or a vintage tattoo!
Available at Lulu.com
