Walrus oosik -- myArmoury.com

Kelly Powell · Posted: Thu 22 May, 2008 11:14 am Post subject: Walrus oosik

Has anybody used walrus oosik(penis bone) for knife/sword handles ?....I've looked around and all i can find are mineralised ones found on ancient traditional hunting/processing sites....the mineralised ones are supposed to polish up with a allmost mineral sheen of greys & greens....If anybody has any knowledge about working with this material, please talk to me....I really would likenot to screw up 80 dollars worth of material if I knew the basic do-do nots.....As is, I'll be treating it like i would petrified wood or ivory.

Chad Arnow · myArmoury Team

Howard Clark has. See here: http://www.summerchild.com/consign_oosic.htm

Kelly Powell · Posted: Thu 22 May, 2008 11:51 am Post subject:

cool! I'm defiatley getting some! I saw on the boones home trader site they have narwhale horn...but I cannot afford it.....I'm getting some simulated ivory cast narwhale for my wifes knife I'm making her.....but defietly getting the oosik for my saex....and maybe some for a langsaex a friends making....mine has a 14" blade, his is around 20"...both are ground from old chainsaw bar......he left the hollow that goes down the bar on his and is going to beat in bronze or copper and do the cross hatching some saexes had......mine is more of a working knife... I have put a bit of belly to the blade and the point isnt as thrust orientated....more for whacking off the heads of cod and salmon and skinning and flensing....his is a battle blade.

Jean Le-Palud · Posted: Thu 22 May, 2008 10:55 pm Post subject:

Hi Kelly,

You can also see here
http://www.jloose.com/
Look for "Norse hunters"

Jeff Pringle · Industry Professional

Oosik files, carves & sands like ivory, but is not as grainy and a bit softer – there is a lot of variation among oosiks, though. I have not run across one as hard as petrified wood yet. Sounds like you are familiar with ivory, so I don’t think you’ll find oosik troublesome. If you haven’t worked ivory before you might want to test drive your working methods on some dried cow bones to get familiar with the oosik density/grain as it compares to wood. The center of the oosik is almost hollow or at least somewhat porous depending on where you are in the bone, so some sort of cutler’s resin or epoxy will be needed to make your grip secure, and the surface is also usually more porous than ivory so be careful with polishing compounds, you can get some oddly enhanced colors by filling the pores with jeweler’s rouge or green chrome – try out your method on a waste piece, if it is porous enough to trap the compound you can usually pull it out with some isopropyl alcohol. If it is staying in, try a different compound or finishing method.
Big Grin

G Ezell · Industry Professional

Nice sax, Jeff.... Big Grin

Dustin R. Reagan · Posted: Fri 23 May, 2008 2:18 pm Post subject:

wow, i love the flow of the blade/hilt! and is that a subtle quench line/hamon?

Kelly Powell · Posted: Fri 23 May, 2008 9:14 pm Post subject:

worked with teeth alot actually.......I'll not be attempting anything as grand as that saex ...beautiful, freakin beautiful.I most liekley will be carving some grooves and srap sections with thin braided rawhide and copper& silver wire...but still leave a lot of the oosik showing. I'll see how it colors and weathers for a season or two and then do a fancier piece for my wife.....so the middle is pithy and porous like a marrow bone , eh? Any suggestions on what kind of epoxy or resin would any of you reccomend?
I'm finishing stock removal of the blade and will try to post my progress along with sir richards....I allready know I'll get some grief about the belly I put on my knife blade, but there seems to be so many variationsof the classic saex, and since I'm gearing mine towards what would be a working blade for a fisherman/sea mammal hunter....oh well, look at it when I post and then tell me.

Jeff Pringle · Industry Professional

Thanks for the compliments on the ooseax!
I did most of the carving on the grip years ago, then had to wait for the right blade to arrive – and then it took a couple more years for me to notice I’d forged the ‘right’ blade for the grip and bring them together.
Yes, the center of the oosik is more or less spongy, which makes drilling and shaping a blind slot for the tang (if that is the construction method used) very easy compared to ivory or hardwoods. For gap-filling glue I like cutler’s resin, it has been proven to hold well for the last few thousand years, unlike those new epoxies that have only been around for a few decades…there are a couple recipes that come up on the first page of a google search.
No hamon visible, the edge steel (1070) got completely hard. It does have a three-bar pattern-welded spine, and the quench line wound up running along where the edge and spine meet – most likely due to the 1070 having a few points more manganese than the 1095/1010 patterned metal. I finished off the blade in a way that makes the patterning fairly obvious in direct sunlight but subtle through the camera’s lens, so here’s a shot of the blade after heat treating, with an etched finish to show the pattern:

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~jlp3/images/3seax1s.jpg

Kelly Powell · Posted: Tue 27 May, 2008 12:03 pm Post subject:

I have no idea how the chainsaw bar will polish up....Most likely I'll blue it or brown it...probably brown it...i process rawhides, and it should have enoughbelly to the blade to make a decent flense or at least do some of the rough work before I break out the ulu knife.

G Ezell · Industry Professional