Thread: Turning Bone

Apparently it stiiiiiiiiiiinks

Bone turns quite nicely, but is hard to get in thick pieces as most bones are hollw and/or honeycombed. Cattle femurs are about the thickest I've found, still not very thick, but enough to get some serious practice with.

And, yes, it stiiiiiiiiiiinks!

If you have any contacts in central Australia, Camel bone is supposed to be the thickest & best for working.

Not only does bone stink, it also can harbour lots of nasty bacteria which can make you real crook if you inhale the stuff. If its not cleaned properly, the fats in the bone go rancid too, making it yellow rather than cream. The quickest cleaning I have read about is to soak it in hydrogen peroxide for several hours after cleaning all traces of meat & marrow etc. off.

Yeah, I once made a nut for a guitar using beef bone over 30 years ago, never worked with bone since, you will definately remember that it stinks.

There've been a few other posts about this, if you want a bit more info.

we used to put the cattle heads on a meat ant nest to clean all the meat, sking marrow, brains and just about anything else they can carry away of then soaked in metho or turps for a day. this got all the smell and made them a nice white color.

then we varnished them up and sold them mounted on wooden backing so they could be hung.

I have turned a lot of bone, mainly for lace bobbins and a few pens. Best I found was the shin bone from a butchers shop. Only the centre bit, about 125mm long as solid enough. In the beginning, I boiled shyte out of the sawn up pieces and then soaked the pieces in bleach for a couple of hours to make it white. It was quite hard and brittle. I now put the raw bone (after cutting up) into water with a bit of detergent and bring to a simmer and then change the water. I do this four or five times to get the fat out, then immerse in bleach. Now it is more like hard plastic. To cut the bone, I bought a fine tooth non-ferrous metal cutting blade for the bandsaw. This proved to be a very good investment. Treated this way there is little or no smell and pleasant to turn. Rib bones are good for making tiny bowls or for inserts in box tops.
Jim