BONE CARVING
The following is only intended as a general guide. There are many good books on Bone Carving as well as talented Bone Carvers that will often run courses on bone carving.
Modern bone carvings are done out of beef bone and similar, the leg bones primarily, the older and bigger the beast the thicker the bone. This is the easiest way to prepare the bone:
CLEANING:
Take your fresh leg bone remove the ends far enough down to avoid the honeycomb texture bone inside.
Extract the marrow.
Place the bones in a pot of hot water with a generous dollop of dishwashing liquid (to break down the fat).
Stew gently for half an hour then leave for a day or two to soak. Don't boil the bones as this makes them hard and brittle
Drain, cool and scrape clean, remove any honeycomb bone left inside, leave to dry, then cut to size.
Cut off oily parts of the bone (using a hacksaw) or the oils will spread through and discolour the white parts of the boneWhat you are aiming for with this is to remove any fat and meat without destroying the "life" in the bone, and still have it come up white. Most of the problems arise from fat getting into the structure of the bone so don't let it get there in the first instance......... Bone that is worn a lot will eventually absorb body oils giving it the yellow translucent look.
MARKING OUT:
Draw your design on the bone as accurately as you can.
SAWING:
Cut out the design with a fine blade using a coping saw or jewellers saw. The fine blades can break easily unless the the bone is well supported. To remove interior cut outs, drill a hole and thread the blade through.
Try to remove as much bone as possible to save having to grind it off later, and give yourself a fairly accurate form to carve to. Doing an accurate job with the saw will mean less work to do during the grinding process.
SHAPING:
Shaping is basically you remove the bone that obviously shouldn't be there, working all over the piece to retain a sense of form. You can use gravers, files, Dremels, drills, grinding stones, whatever works for you. High speed rotary tools are now commonly used and certainly speed things up.. When you have ground, carved or removed as much bone as possible the next step is sanding to remove the scratches left by the grinding process.
SANDING:
Sanding is done by progressing from coarse through to smooth grits.. The first grit is most important as it must remove all scratches from files or other grinding tools. Then, progress through grades one at a time. Start on 150 or 240 grit, then 320, 400, 600 and 800. It is best to cut your paper in to strips about 2cm wide which made it reasonably flexible and involves little wastage.
POLISHING:
The simplest polishing compound to use is Brasso and a cotton cloth. However all traces of the Brasso must be removed afterwards. The best method is a cotton buff wheel and a stick of white rouge. Don't use other coloured rouges as they will stain the bone.