first powder horn

[IronBrigade]

I finally decided to make my first powder horn, it was a lot more work than I thought. This was a very thick horn which required a lot of polishing. I even tried a little scrimshaw and realized I'm no artist. This project was a lot of fun and My hat goes off to people like Horner75 who makes some incredible horns. I believe this will not be my last horn build.

[52bagman]

Heck yeah, looks good to me. I have one that needs to be done, will have to wait for winter and bad weather tho.

[AtlLaw]

WoooooWeeee!      How cool is that!!!     I'll be trying one of those sometime!  Tell us how you did it!?    
 
 

[IronBrigade]

Atlaw
1)    I  scraped the horn down using a buck knife
2)    I used a file to form the throat and raised rings on the horn. I filed the spout of the horn into an octagon shape.
3)     I finished polishing the horn with sand paper and steel wool.
4)    I used white spray paint on the top half of the horn, let it dry and rubbed some red mahogany stain over the paint. I put 5 coats of stain on the spout.
5)    I used small brass nails to secure the wood base that I made.

     This was a real thick horn so I had to do a lot of scraping. A friend of my gave me a cd on how to make powder horns, so I will use this and a thinner horn to build my next one. Here is a better close up picture of the horn showing the octagon spout. I only had 1 or 2 coats of stain at this point, but it wasn't dark enough for me.

[AtlLaw]

I have a small horn I recently got from TotW.  Its already polished down to a point that it's about a 16th of an inch thick.  You can almost see through it.  Trouble is I want to file flats or ridges or such and I don't think I have enough material to do that!   
 
Where did you get your horn?   

[Ranger99]

nice work.
i've made 3. yes , they are a big p.i.t.a.


there is a leather supplier about 2 miles from here
that has about 20-30 horns of different sizes and
degrees of finish to be had. at one time they also
had a few water buffalo horns for projects other
than powder horns (knife handles- buttons-etc)
they have stores in a lot of places. i like to
be able to eyeball materials for projects like that.
d.g.w. used to have horns, and c.c.t.post north of
here used to carry them.

[IronBrigade]

A friend gave me this horn, he wanted to get me started in horn making. I'm not quite sure where he got the horn, from he had several, I happened to pick this one. It was a long horn, I cut off approx 5"to 6" from it. I will  ask him where he gets the horns, i would like to get some more. I will let ya know.