Blackining Steel????

I've used the oil blackening method to blacken gun parts for years. If you get the thick coating, the part was too hot. Had a cylinder I oil quenched and it had the same thick film. I use waste motor oil. Easy to come by and works well.

The Birchwood Casey line of products (as well as others I'm sure) are available at any Wally World. That's usually where I buy my Tru Oil.

How do you age the ivory? I've used tea leaves with some success in the past.

BTW, I can't tell the parts apart. They both look the same age to my untrained eye. Great work.

Yes,the one in back is the new one. It would have been very difficult to soak the ivory parts through with oil,like the old one. Probably took years for it to penetrate like that. And,whale oil at that.

Ivory is very dense,like bone,and doesn't have the tiny pores that bone has.

The parts are of the "flyer" on very rare and expensive types of spinning wheels used as ladies training by the wealthy in the 18th. c. All females were expected to know how to spin. Even Queen Elizabeth the First. Even though they probably never did spinning beyond the learning stage,it was considered a normal p;art of their education. Curiously,men did the weaving. Spun threads were saved up and taken to weavers to be made into cloth by professionals. Probably looms were too large,and possibly too expensive for most houses.

These wheels were quite unlike the normal variety you have seen. They had mahogany frames with inlaid bandings. Their wheels were small(about 12" dia.),made of pewter or brass. They had level winding mechanisms made of brass,not unlike the bobbin winding mechanisms of later sewing machines,with heart shaped cams. Only the wealthy could afford them.

I like getting to
make missing parts for them,as the only way to get parts is to make them.

Ageing ivory properly is a bit of a learning curve. First of all,old ivory in these wheels is invariably coated with a very fine layer of soot,which has gotten embedded in the surface over hundreds of years. It's very fine,but it's there. I have worked out ways to add this layer and stain the ivory just the right color.

Houses were heated with wood,or especially with coal,causing the fine layer of soot which permeated everything more or less.

There is a left hand thread inside the "pulley". I make taps that also have the correct form of early threads,and are left handed. Usually,these taps get used only once since I make them to match parts I'm given to copy. The early threads often resemble light bulb threads(knuckle threads) in miniature. Sometimes threads are more like 90 degree V threads,rather than the deeper cut 60º threads we have today.

George, Try coffee for the ivory, I know it works on bone to give it an antique look, but it has to soak a while.

jpfabricator, If you use a torch For a part that size if it is solid you will need to preheat it. I say this because you do not want the surface to get hot enough to scale up. as said dull red (Dim lighting) dip it in fast and move it around. Let it cool in the oil for a bit (just so the oil doesn't char when pulled out into the air) Also pulling it out to fast may cause the problem George had of the oil baking on to thick.

I liked using a thin wire through a hole or around the part if you hole it with pliers it will show. Be sure the steel is pretty clean when you start heat slow.
All that said I will now tell you I had just asked all this a few months back because I was having mixed results. I am no expert but I hope to help keep you from doing all the things I did wrong.

Here are some pics of some parts I did. they are about 1-1/2 x 3/4 x 1/2 at the thickest part. in the third photo the end has felt on. The larger the part the tougher it is to get good results.

I have heard of doing it in a oven but I have not tried that because I do not have an oven that goes that high. think like for hardening. Keep us posted I would love to hear what you come up with. I like the black finish and am on the hunt for easier ways for doing it.
Mark

RE: aging ivory, I remember a bit from a novel with a character who was an art forger who had his servant rub faked ivory pieces with his sweaty greasy hands for days on end to patinate them. The book is "The Recognitions" by William Gaddis. Thick chewy reading, but rewarding in the end.
There is a kind of home brew parkerizing you can do with phosphoric acid or Ospho and manganeses dioxide- that is the stuff in the outer layer of dry cell batteries or you can just get some from a pottery supply house cheaper. It's used in making colored glazes. I haven't done this myself, but did some research a while back.

Is this real ivory? When I used to tune pianos, an old timer piano tuner showed me how he used iodine. The same iodine that you use for cuts. He would stained the key with iodine and then wiped it off. Sometimes two or three times, that so he could match the other keys that were not broken. We would save ivories from old pianos that were scrapped. Even 35 years ago new ivory was difficult to get and it was very expensive. To this day I still have ivory key tops stored in a box. Mark

I use Orasol dyes for my work. They are the most light fast dyes available,and were arc light tested for color fastness. They were developed for the automotive industry in Germany. Used by the conservators in Williamsburg.

They aren't cheap. But,a little goes a long way in the type of small work I mostly do.

I have made many.many recipes of varnish as well for violins. Got really into it years ago. So much so that my director began to get on my case about it! But,varnish is a key element in violin making. I used iron as the basis of the colors. The hot resins are acidic,and become very active when molten,eating up iron ions to make brown colors. These colors are at the end of their chemical chain,and will never,ever fade. I made blood red from iron also. Blood red is tricky to make,and temperatures have to be just right. Even made some transparent green using copper. We have some 18th. C. chairs in the museum that look like bamboo(just carved wood,though). They were originally varnished with a transparent green varnish for a realistic green bamboo finish.

To get things to penetrate, I use a bell jar and a vacuum pump for small items. Once they are coated (and still wet) I pull a mild vacuum and when it is released, atmospheric pressure forces the dye into the material.

George, your devotion to craftsmanship never ceases to amaze me. Thanks for any and all of your posts in this area!