How to carve deer antlers or horns. Do I bleach them first or scrape them.?

Answer 1

Soaking in water was done traditionally. Bleach--I don't know.

Go to the Yahoo groups site called historic-hornantlerbone and join the group. They have help for newbies just learning the craft of animal ivory carving, plus stone, bone, etc carving. It's free!

See here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Historic-HornAntlerBone/

Here're 3 neat sites about antler, horn and bone carvings and the traditions of artists who performed this craft:

http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/ivory.html

http://moas.atlantia.sca.org/wsnlinks/index.php?action=displaycat&catid=1

http://www.florilegium.org/files/CRAFTS/ivory-msg.html

Sounds cool! Good luck!

Answer 2

How To Carve Antlers