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Old 10-07-2008, 09:22 PM
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KatherinePlumer KatherinePlumer is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Oak Run, California
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Default Re: Katherine's Scrimshaw Tutorial: experimenting with mammoth ivory

I was asked to expand on the topic of sealing the ivory (I think?). Okay. Bear in mind I've never done this before, but I'll act like I know what I'm talking about. I was told, and have read, that you can seal a porous surface (such as bone, or this particular piece of ivory) by applying a coating of super glue. Well, I always thought that sounded pretty weird, I mean who wants to scrim on super glue, doesn't that look ugly, so I never wanted to try it and just avoided porous things. Um yeah, so apparently you're supposed to sand it down level again. Lol. I'm usually smarter than that (no comments on that, ahem!). The idea is the glue will seal up the pores even once you've sanded it down. I am trusting those that know more than me (which is a lot of you reading this).

Oh, just an interesting side note, that little ugly scrap piece I did all the tests on, sealed vs. unsealed, well it still looks all the same, the ink hasn't bled at all. Interesting....

Anyway.

I'm pretty low tech, so there's no complicated method here. Just get that glue on there however you can (I just use the tip of the glue container thingy to apply it) and do be careful not to glue it to yourself.

When you're done, and it's dry, it looks ugly:



I think I had sanded it to 600 before I did this, and then I picked up again where I left off, and woo wee let me tell you that glue is hard! That's going on the list of not-favorite-things-to-do. It was quite nice to get that done: