Faux Scrimwshaw Sporran Closure

[Abax]

I recently purchased a second Freelander sporran through Steve at Freedom Kilts. I wanted to personalize it a little bit, so I purchased an antler horn base at the local craft shop to use as a closure. The horn base was an interesting shape, but it had a large polished area in the middle that cried out for some decoration. The picture below shows the result of my effort to replicate some scrimshaw artwork:



I did this by printing a reverse image of some artwork using a laser printer and ordinary paper. I cut around the image with scissors, then I wet the paper and placed it on the antler. After smoothing it in place with my finger, I ironed the paper onto the antler with a hot iron. The heat and moderate pressure caused the toner to stick to the antler.

To remove the paper, I wet it under running water and rubbed it off the antler with my finger and light pressure. Finally, I coated the antler with a coat of clear acrylic to protect the toner. When the clear acrylic dried, I buffed it with some #0000 steel wool and then a terry cloth to replicate the sheen of polished antler.

It took four tries on this antler to get a result I liked. Here's a few things I learned during those tries:

1) Light images look more like scrimshaw than really dark images. Too dark and the result looks like it was produced by an ink stamp.

2) It's tempting to just peel the dry paper off of the antler when you're done ironing it, but this also removes some of the toner that is still adhered to the paper. By wetting the paper and rubbing it off with your finger, all the toner is left on the antler and it is much easier to control the lightness or darkness of the result.

3) If you make a mistake and want to try again, it's easy to remove the old toner by sanding, scraping or filing. Bone or antler is porous, but the toner doesn't penetrate very far into the surface (I'm guessing about 0.0015 inches or half the thickness of typing paper). Don't try removing the toner with a light solvent because you'll just wipe black stuff all over your surface - it's messy (I know, I tried it).

4) Wet the paper before placing it on the surface. This makes it easy for the paper to conform to convex shapes. It also helps hold it in place until you get it tacked down with a hot iron. At first, I let the paper air-dry before ironing, but after a few attempts found that it didn't really matter if the paper was wet when I started ironing. The hot iron quickly dries the paper without distorting it.

5) Artwork that consists mainly of lines will look more like scrimshaw than something with lots of gradients. It is certainly possible - it might even look pretty cool - to transfer a photo using the method I've described. Although the image I found for the letter "D" on the closure shown above was originally a color image with lots of gradients, by editing it in Photoshop, I was able to turn it into a gray-scale image with lots of contrast. Laser printers render gray as half-tones (like photos in a newspaper), so I was able to see dots in the image printed on paper. But once the image was transferred to the antler, the dots were almost unnoticeable.

6) Some extremely light details did not transfer very well, like the decoration in the left corners of the image below. This sample gives you some idea of how the master image and the result are related to each other.




Here's another example:



I have also used this technique on wood, but I peel the paper off dry after ironing it in place.

Abax

[PiobBear]

That's exceptionally cool!

[Freelander Sporrano]

Looks like a cool add on to one of our sporrans ..well done. I love it when folks try something new...

[escherblacksmith]

something else you can try with that (although I have not tried on bone) but that same toner also works as a resist to acid. So, if you reverse image on your design (switch white and black) and after the transfer, carefully coat with a mild acid (diluted muriatic or some such), let it bite for a bit and then use baking soda to neutralize the acid, and rub off the toner, now you have an etched design.

I have done this on metal, not on organic material, so it would behoove you to test it on a piece that is replaceable.

If you try, let me know how it turns out!

[Wompet]

Abax (and escherblacksmith) - thanks for the great suggestions. This thread has been marked for reference. Now all I need is a Freelander sporran ...

[Alan H]

This is cool.