• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Aging Powder Horns

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Jun 17, 2019
Messages
6,693
Reaction score
7,516
There's a muzzleloading product called "Old Bones", for aging horn or bone. One ounce in a gallon of water, it's a nice purple color. Used it for the first time today on some small carved beef bone items, and a polished, unfinished pre-powder horn. The aging is really beautiful! No heat needed, just soak until you get the degree of darkening you want. Resulted in a warm, aged brown color like you see in the photos of craftsmen-made horns. Just my personal experience with it. I bought the bottle of 4 oz. for $4.50 at Dixon's Muzzleloading Shop in Kempton, Pa., but you could google it for more info. Thanks.
 
There's a muzzleloading product called "Old Bones", for aging horn or bone. One ounce in a gallon of water, it's a nice purple color. Used it for the first time today on some small carved beef bone items, and a polished, unfinished pre-powder horn. The aging is really beautiful! No heat needed, just soak until you get the degree of darkening you want. Resulted in a warm, aged brown color like you see in the photos of craftsmen-made horns. Just my personal experience with it. I bought the bottle of 4 oz. for $4.50 at Dixon's Muzzleloading Shop in Kempton, Pa., but you could google it for more info. Thanks.
It's mfg. by; Howard Robinson 105 Alta Dr., Lawrenceburg, KY 40342 per the bottle label.
 
One would do it if one does not have 200 years to wait for the antiqued color.
Some people who buy my horns don't want them paper white, especially horns with maps on them.
Yet the paper white ones are easier to see what you are drawing on them. Thus the aging solution, then wax.
 
One would do it if one does not have 200 years to wait for the antiqued color.
Some people who buy my horns don't want them paper white, especially horns with maps on them. Yet the paper white ones are easier to see what you are drawing on them. Thus the aging solution, then wax.

So some people may want a horn hanging on the wall that appears to be 250 years old? That makes sense.

How many of the folks who use their horns for living history buy them aged? I want mine unaged, for as a frontier rifleman in the F&I who made his own horn or got the horn with his rifle, I don't want the horn to look like it was made in 1500, or even to look like it was 50 years old and made in 1705.:confused: IF I bothered to carve, assemble, and scrim a horn with the local area map in 1755, and the year is now 1763 and I'm long-hunting for hides....my horn shouldn't look like it's nearly a century old, I'd say.

I have a horn for hunting as a modern guy in period correct attire, and it's white areas are stained light brown, but not for aging. It's not white as a bit of white moving at elbow height through the woods during deer season may draw fire from a local Yahoo with less sense than a peanut. ;)

LD
 
So some people may want a horn hanging on the wall that appears to be 250 years old? That makes sense.

How many of the folks who use their horns for living history buy them aged? I want mine unaged, for as a frontier rifleman in the F&I who made his own horn or got the horn with his rifle, I don't want the horn to look like it was made in 1500, or even to look like it was 50 years old and made in 1705.:confused: IF I bothered to carve, assemble, and scrim a horn with the local area map in 1755, and the year is now 1763 and I'm long-hunting for hides....my horn shouldn't look like it's nearly a century old, I'd say.

I have a horn for hunting as a modern guy in period correct attire, and it's white areas are stained light brown, but not for aging. It's not white as a bit of white moving at elbow height through the woods during deer season may draw fire from a local Yahoo with less sense than a peanut. ;)

LD
You're right about that! The old time people used NEW things; so many forget that!
 
So some people may want a horn hanging on the wall that appears to be 250 years old? That makes sense.

How many of the folks who use their horns for living history buy them aged? I want mine unaged, for as a frontier rifleman in the F&I who made his own horn or got the horn with his rifle, I don't want the horn to look like it was made in 1500, or even to look like it was 50 years old and made in 1705.:confused: IF I bothered to carve, assemble, and scrim a horn with the local area map in 1755, and the year is now 1763 and I'm long-hunting for hides....my horn shouldn't look like it's nearly a century old, I'd say.

I have a horn for hunting as a modern guy in period correct attire, and it's white areas are stained light brown, but not for aging. It's not white as a bit of white moving at elbow height through the woods during deer season may draw fire from a local Yahoo with less sense than a peanut. ;)

LD
About the white flash, a really long time ago when I was in college in Wisconsin, I guy got shot wiping his butt. The next year, you could buy orange TP.
 
I guy got shot wiping his butt. The next year, you could buy orange TP.
Well in my case the large pair of pasty white glutes bared to outdoors would probably still draw fire compared to the wadded up blaze orange TP. Luckily I've trained my system by virtue of my work schedule for 30 years, plus four prior years in The Marines, to "dump before dawn". So the only thing that disrupts that is sketchy fast food....

WOW sorta got off topic....We Now Return You To Aging Powder Horns, Folks!

LD
 
I've used "Old Bones" to take the shine off of an antler knife handle, and to tone down the white on a map horn I made for a friend. Works fine. As of my own powder horn, I've used the same ol' buffler horn for about 20 years now, and it was black when I got it and still is, though it's scuffed up some now ---- but then, so am I.
Hadn't heard about the feller who got shot whilst wiping his butt, but it doesn't surprise me. The woods are full of pilgrims who'll shoot at flashes of white, or sounds in the brush, or sounds that only they can hear.
 
When I first started making horns I wanted to give them that parchment like look. I visited a local museum and they kindly allowed me examine a few original old horns. To me, the coloration did not appear to be natural aging, thought that factor added to the beauty of the existing color. So I went home and thought about how they would have attained such a color and figured they were probably boiling them in left over tea grindings and onion skins, things common to them. Plus boiling softened up the horn for carving, scraping, and fitting the butt cap. This is what I have been doing ever since. I think back in the day a uncolored white horn would have been the exception, and not the norm, especially those horns made by those in the business of doing such.
Robby
 
Mia Culpa
Not aging a horn but a violation of my above statement. Got a new copper tinderbox. I was had the grill going and decided to make some char. Had to throw on that shiny new box, full of water to save the solder, to give it a bit of personality
Mia Culpa Mia Culpa
 
Why is it that every post on ageing techniques results in unsolicited opinions as to whether it's kosher or not? I would just like to add that, from personal experience, potassium permanganate provides an almost instant brown color - very easy to use. However, it fades quickly.
 
Why is it that every post on ageing techniques results in unsolicited opinions as to whether it's kosher or not? I would just like to add that, from personal experience, potassium permanganate provides an almost instant brown color - very easy to use. However, it fades quickly.
I didn't see anything that was posted that said antiquing was right or wrong.
I did see a few that pointed out that if a person is reenacting and trying to look like the people who lived 150 or 200 years ago, most of those people wouldn't be carrying around powder horns that looked, at the time, like they were 200 years old.

In other words, they weren't saying that aging was "right" or "wrong" for someone who isn't doing any reenacting and just wants to carry something that looked like it was 200 years old.
 
Back
Top