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Old 09-30-2008, 12:05 PM
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KatherinePlumer KatherinePlumer is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Oak Run, California
Posts: 233
Default Re: Katherine's Scrimshaw Tutorial: experimenting with mammoth ivory

Hmm, okay, that was unexpected...

So yesterday I set out to get this little piece of ivory sanded down and polished. These pieces are flat, just not smooth. Ivory dust stinks, and mammoth ivory dust seems to stink even more, so I opted for wet-sanding. I've wet sanded the elephant ivory before without incident. But the moment this mammoth ivory got wet it absorbed water like you wouldn't believe, and the surface became very uneven:



Yikes. Anyone had this problem?

I stopped working on it, can't sand it when it's all lumpy like that, and I set it out to dry. It's dry today and has almost completely returned to normal but I can still see the "hills and valleys" that formed yesterday.

Soooo, I guess I'll be dry-sanding it.

And I think that's a good indication that I'm going to have to seal it before I even think about inking it!

Hey, good thing I said this was experimental!