The Gentle Art of Scrimshaw!

Greetings, FinderMakers! If you have followed me from the get-go, you may remember some earlier posts that reflected my interest in mammoth ivory and old piano key ivory and their use in scrimshaw. I am pleased to finally offer this third and final installation in my "Urban Scrimshaw" series: An easy-to-use tutorial that will have you scrimming like a salty old sea dog in no time! The image above is a scrimshawed whale tooth from the Nicholson Whaling Collection at the Providence Public Library, an excellent resource for inspirational images and information! The image below shows some old ivory piano keys I pulled from an abandoned piano.



Before we begin, I have two requests of you, kind reader: First, please do go back and read my earlier posts on mammoth ivory and piano key ivory, as the latter is the material of focus in this tutorial, and that earlier post will provide you with a solid pedestal of knowledge upon which your crafty new skills may be proudly installed. Second, please know that I myself am no "salty old sea dog" in the scrimshaw department; My scrimshaw schooner has only just sailed out of the port and I have plenty to learn as this journey unfolds! My own drawing skills are sorely lacking, and so I have adapted a solvent-transfer technique to the art of scrimshaw to aid in the process of creating a clear, recognizable image, so even if you can barely draw a smiley face, you'll still have a pretty good shot at making a beautiful piece of scrimshaw if you follow along with me!



Above are some of the items used for this project:
- an old ivory piano key (or other suitable material, like a piece of mammoth ivory)
- a pin secured in an x-acto knife holder
- some black ink
- acetone (nail polish remover)
- a little block of beeswax
You will also need a regular black and white photocopy of the image you want to etch onto your ivory.

To begin, I shall explain that the basic procedure for producing scrimshaw simply involves scratching an image into the surface of the ivory with a pin, then applying ink (or, in the olden days, "lamp black," soot collected from oil lamps), which soaks into the scratches and is wiped away from the unscratched surface. The first step in our process will be to seal the surface of our piano key, as it is somewhat porous and, if left unsealed, may soak up some of the black ink that we apply after the design has been scratched in, leaving an unwanted inky black cloud on the key that will be impossible to remove.



To seal the key, I place a buffing wheel on my dremel tool and start it spinning. Then I touch the spinning wheel to my little block of beeswax so that the wheel picks up a little wax. The wheel, now loaded with wax, is run all over the surface of the piano key so that the wax gets worked into it. Afterwards, you will see the hazy layer of beeswax on the surface of the key; just rub it with a clean cloth until the excess surface wax has been buffed off and the key looks nice and shiny. If you don't have a dremel tool, that's ok; just rub a little block of beeswax thoroughly over the surface of the key, making sure not to miss any spots. When you have built up a thin layer, buff the key with a clean cloth until it looks shiny... it is now all sealed and ready for the next step!

Now you will need to decide what image you would like to scratch into the surface of your key. I found one of those clip art books full of Victorian-era illustrations at the thrift store; it is a great source for appropriate images! When you find something you like, scale it down to fit on the piano key either on your computer (photoshop, etc.), or directly on a black and white photocopy machine. The solvent-transfer technique only works with standard black and white photocopies, so if you scale your images on the computer, you will need to print them out and then bring your printout to the copy shop and make a black and white photocopy of it. If you are using an image that involves text, the transfer technique applies a reversed image onto the surface of the piano key, so you will need to print out your image in reverse if you want it to show up correctly after it is transferred. Below is a section of my photocopy sheet with some appropriately scaled images; I chose to use a horse head with some leafy swags.



Next, trim your image out and decide where on the piano key you would like it to go:



Place the image face down on the surface of the piano key and moisten a cotton ball with nail polish remover. Holding the slip of paper firmly in place with one hand, dab the soaked cotton ball onto the back of the paper with your other hand. The acetone will free the photocopy ink from the paper surface, transferring it onto the ivory! Make sure the paper gets plenty damp with acetone (it will become translucent) and then, after a few seconds (but before the paper begins to dry) peel the paper away from the key-- your image will be transferred!





If it doesn't work perfectly, don't fret. Just wipe the image off of the piano key with your acetone-soaked cotton ball, reseal the surface with beeswax, and try again with a new photocopy image (you can't use them twice, so it's a good idea to print out several copies of the images you want to use!)



Now that we have a nice template transferred onto the piano key, we can start our scrimshaw! The dark parts of the transfer will be the dark parts of the competed scrimshaw and, as you will recall, the black ink soaks into the lines we have scratched into the ivory surface, so we can now start to scratch lines into the dark areas of the transfer. This is best accomplished with the tip of a pin or sewing needle that has been tightly screwed into an x-acto knife holder. I use wire cutters to nip about a 1/2 inch of the sharp tip off of a sewing needle, then place this in the x-acto holder with about 1/4 inch protruding, then screw the holder down so the needle tip can't move.



You will probably need to experiment with what type of lines end up looking the most appealing to you: shading can be accomplished by scratching in "crosshatched" lines, or by varying the distance between the lines that you scratch into the ivory surface. You might also like to try a fatter sewing needle versus a thinner one to vary the size of the lines. Sometimes a "stippling" technique is used: The needle tip is pushed into the ivory creating fields of tiny dots that comprise darker or lighter shaded areas depending on the number of dots applied. Detailed stippling can yield images that look nearly photographic! In the photo below, you can see that I have scratched away almost all of the black photocopy transfer image; it is now time to apply the black ink!





The ink is applied with a cotton swab that I dipped into the ink. Let the ink dry (only takes a minute) then wipe the dried ink off the ivory surface with a slightly damp paper towel; the dried ink will stay in the lines you scratched, and your image is now revealed! Now wet a piece of paper towel with a little acetone, and rub the surface lightly to remove any leftover bits of the photocopy ink.



Now go ahead and seal the surface with beeswax again just like you did in the beginning; this will seal in the ink so it wont bleed if you should get the ivory wet again. If you see some areas that need to be scratched more, then you can do so now, after you have sealed it the second time. Just add in some more scratches and repeat the inking and sealing process. You can keep doing this until you are pleased with the way your image looks!



If you don't have access to a black and white photocopier, you may achieve similar results in the following manner: Scale down your image to the appropriate size on the computer and print it out. Then draw over the dark areas in your image with a sharp pencil (I use a mechanical pencil). Next, place the image face down on your piano key and rub the back of the image with a spoon, bone folder, or similar hard, blunt object; this will transfer the pencil outline faintly onto the surface of your ivory! The picture below is a piano key with a scrimshawed sperm whale I did using the pencil transfer technique... it turned out nicely!



And a few more:





I based the Kachina drawing above on this actual Hopi carved cottonwood root Kachina, called "Ahote":



Thanks so much for joining me, and please do feel free to contact me if you need any clarification or additional info!



(please note: scrimshaw imagery and art, piano key scrimshaw, etc. property the artist, copyright Paul Baxendale 2009/2010)

Urban Scrimshaw? part 2: Mammoth Ivory!

Another fine form of ivory you will not be able to scavenge in your neighborhood, unless your neighborhood happens to be located in the Yakutia Republic of Russia, is Mammoth Ivory. The frozen ground of this region just south of the Arctic Circle has preserved the remains of millions, perhaps even billions of extinct Woolly Mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) which roamed the area up until the end of the Pleistocene Era some 10,000 years ago. During summer, the frozen tundra thaws just enough to reveal these ancient treasures to those who know where to look. Mammoth Ivory isn't just a recent commodity; Russian craftspeople have been carving the material into beautiful works of art for years, but thanks to ambitious fossil hunters like Igor G., Mammoth Ivory is finally readily available to crafters and hobbyists in America! This video offers a glimpse into the remote world of mammoth ivory excavations.

I first found out about Igor's business while searching for Mammoth Ivory on Ebay, and couldn't resist bidding on one of his lots of "Mammoth tusk trimmings" which consist of various sizes and shapes of tusk sold by the pound: My 2 pound lot (above) yielded a wonderful array of useful pieces of ancient ivory (detail below)! So what have I done with my Mammoth Ivory? I must admit to being somewhat intimidated by this ancient stuff; I cant help but feel awed by the tremendous age of the pieces, and have been reluctant to do anything other than handle them and ponder life on the tundra thousands of years ago. That said, I did choose some of the finest pieces and buff them well with a bit of beeswax on my dremel buffing wheel and solder brass display mounts for them. Those made fine gifts for the Natural History buffs in my family. I also used a piece to fashion a crude representation of an Eskimo fishing spear: As soon as I feel more comfortable with my scrimshaw skills, I shall certainly like to depict a whaling scene on one of my larger slabs of Mammoth Ivory! The fellow I mentioned in my previous post on piano key ivory, Derrick Cruz, has crafted a limited edition line of Mammoth Ivory straight razors for the gents under the name of his line Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons. Well played, Sir! And finally, if you'd like to learn more about Mammoths and the Mammoth Ivory trade, take a look at this excerpt from the book "Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age" by Adrian Lister, Paul Bahn, and Jean Auel... fascinating reading! Please check back soon for part 3 of this post addressing the gentle art of scrimshaw! Mammoth Ivory Tusk Tip.

Urban Scrimshaw? Part One...

Driving past a boarded up house one gloomy afternoon I spied on the patio an old upright piano, wet and warped. My "ivory sense" tingled at the prospect that the piano might be old enough to have been fitted with ivory-clad keys rather than plastic. Indeed! Ivory keys, although one might have missed the keys altogether for the layers of dirt and leaves that had accumulated over the keyboard. Now, to address a necessary technicality briefly: The ivory itself is but a thin veneer over a wooden key, so although the piece of ivory is relatively small, bear in mind that there are around 52 of the white keys on a keyboard, so in total we end up with a nice little pile of ivory when the whole thing is stripped! I should also mention that each white key is generally divided into two parts, the area that the finger makes contact with, which yields a thin piece of ivory about 1" x 2" (referred to as a "head") and the long thin part which falls between the black keys, measuring perhaps 1/2" x 4" (referred to as the "tail"). Now some resourceful lad or lass had already taken the "heads" off of this old piano, but no matter; 52 tails is still a nice take! The picture below reveals the missing "heads" and the "tails" which were still affixed (note: this photo was taken retrospectively. I had cleaned the keys before I had the idea to keep things documented, so I placed them back where I had found them and snapped the photo. The dirty looking key in the center is as they were originally found; I had overlooked that one!)

Now a question for the FinderMaker: "Why Ivory?! Didn't an elephant have to die to get that stuff? Ewww!" I am delighted that the question was raised and will now assert that Yes, an elephant probably did die in the 1800's to take the tusk so that this piano could be fitted with ivory keys. Thankfully, the trade of ivory in the US was banned in 1990 (sadly, however, poachers still pursue elephants to supply other global markets for ivory). I abhor the idea of supporting the death of elephants for ivory, but if an elephant gave its life 100 years ago to supply ivory piano keys, I think it is a shame if those ivory piano keys go to waste left out in the weather, or worse yet, end up in a landfill. Honor the elephant by putting those fine old ivory keys to use; make something beautiful! It seems lately that creative folks are doing just that! One such fellow, Derrick Cruz, crafts and markets an exquisite line of jewelry and accessories featuring ivory piano keys under the name "Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons" His pieces are by no means inexpensive, but why should they be? The are wonderfully crafted, and quite unlike anything else on the market. Of course, with a little creativity, and access to an old piano, the ambitious reader can make some fine jewelry or accessories as well! Now, speaking of access to an old piano, gentle reader, they are everywhere! Unwanted pianos are nearly as prolific as old copies of National Geographic, so if you start poking around on craigslist, junkyards, alleys and empty lots, I have confidence that you, too, will find one. I find that by concentrating intensely on things I want to find, eventually I find it (usually just after I've forgotten I wanted it!). If all else fails, visit your local piano repairperson, who may have a box of old ivories they'd be willing to let you cull from for a nominal fee. Generally, piano key ivory can be popped off the keys without much effort using a knife-tip. Stubborn keys can be lifted by heating with a blow drier or heat gun set on low; this softens up the adhesive greatly and makes removal a snap. Although the keys I found were very dirty, they cleaned up nicely with a bit of mild soap and warm water. The upper 1/4 inch of mine had stained red from contact with part of the felted hammer mechanism; as I found this unappealing, I stacked them all up, bound them tightly with tape and cut off that portion of all of them en masse on the band saw.
This photo shows the keyboard stripped. I also took the black keys, which are carved of dense ebony wood which is black all the way through. I don't yet have a project in mind for them, but ebony is a nice wood that finds use in various inlay and decorative projects, and is certainly worth having on hand! In Part Two of this post, I'll touch upon "Mammoth Ivory" and introduce the gentle art of Scrimshaw...