Waste to wonder

Last hunting season I had the good fortune to find a shed antler. My less-than-good fortune was that some had very clearly been snacking on it and a bit of green something was growing on it. While not large enough for any sort of knife scale work it was more than large enough for me to cut off a few pieces and see how it handles on the lathe before seeking out something in a bit better condition.

After taking some rough measurements and giving myself a wide margin of error I took the dovetail saw to it and learned my first lesson of working with antler: it smells ... kinda like teeth. That same smell you get from a dentistry drill when you need some work done. Luckily the mask killed the worst of it but it was not great. Lesson the second: antler is pretty porous in the middle, and lots of CA glue was needed to stabilize it. Resin would probably be a better choice but for a test I was fine with leaning on "good-enough" vs. "probably great".

The outer layers turned great surprisingly, though my steel tools dug in a bit too much. Carbide tools with their scraping action seemed to work better. It felt a bit like turning epoxy but stiffer. I wound up with the same long curls of material. Getting it to size was a bit tricky at the narrow end of things with how close to the core of the material I got, but a bit more glue kept it together and filled the voids. It polished wonderfully, using a micromesh type of sanding pad, up to 12k grit, I got a nice luster and feel with just a bit of wax at the end. I kept things a bit fat at the bottom to give it a bit of weight, the next one will be a bit slimmer for a nicer profile.