Recent Work: Dragon Pendant

Finally spring time is here and so is the possibility to work outside. This means bone carving! Here you see one of the first carving projects of 2012 and if this isn't my best one so far, I don't know...

The design is my own, but was to a large degree influenced by an urnes style original from the viking age. The design itself as on paper is a lot more pure Urnes style, while adding the dots inside the body of the dragon makes the pendant more of a viking-style-crossover.

At Work: Carving a Thor's Hammer Bone Pendant

After many many requests about how I carve the bone jewelry, I decided to show the process of making a Thor's Hammer here step by step. Keep in mind that this is NOT a real tutorial, since these steps display my personal way to reach my aim and may be totally improper for others.
Though I am of course happy if you find it helpful for your own work.

Let's start!
Of course there are some things needed before the actual carving work starts.
First of all there was the design which you can see above. And a pile of "material" which you can see below.

on this picture you see my staff considering the most suitable piece for my work

I often get questions about the bones I use. Usually I simply buy bovine bones in the supermarket, frozen and filled with marrow. This is when my little helpers (see pic above) come into the play.
During weeks of intense engagement they clean them very well and make them almost ready for the use. However, the sun and the weather are additional factors in the preparation process of the material.

The last step of preparation would be to choose a suitable piece of bone and to roughly cut it out.

Below you can see numbered pictures of the following working steps including the actually used attachments/accessories for my Dremel Power Tool. (click on them to make em bigger, you know?!)
The numbers correspond with the steps of work. If there's no number on the single pictures, it means that they show the result of the previous procedure.
Underneath you will find a short description of each particular step.

1. Transfering of the design onto the roughly cutted and grinded bone
2. Engraving the outlines with a medium sized, round-headed, engraving cutter
3. Cutting out the workpiece and beveling of some of the hard edges, using an engraving cutter with a cylindric head for both procedures

4. Using a big sized, round-headed, engraving cutter to deepen the section around the bottom knotwork
5. Using a small sized, round-headed, engraving cutter to deepen all important lines
6. Adjusting irregularities of the surface and the thickness of the workpiece

7. Using a small sized, round-headed, engraving cutter to deepen all important lines that may have vanished during the previous working step
8. Shaping of all edges with an engraving cutter with a cylindric head
9. Engraving the cuts on the lateral sections with a conic headed cutter
10. Using big sized, round-headed, engraving cutter to make the dots in the background of the bottom section
11. Using a small sized, round-headed, engraving cutter to deepen all important lines, add some new ones and "dotting" the lateral areas

12. Using different Diamond Wheel Point accessories for grinding down and smoothing



13. The final sanding with good old school sandpaper
14. Polishing

Ready! The result can be found here: Bone Hammers

Recent Works: More carvings

Here are some recent custom bone carving works:

Recent Works: First two carvings in 2010

Due to the weather conditions I did no new carvings this year - until this week.
I have some custom carving works to do, however I started with this two bone pendants for my shop to get used to the tools again after this seasonal break of more than half a year.

Thor's Hammer pendant with knotwork design

Vårby Beast pendant

Both are for sale in my Etsy Shop!

Recent Works: Århus-Mask in Bone and Amber

Recent Works: New norse bone pendants

New Jelling-Beast pendant

New valknut pendant

New Thorshammer design

Of course for sale in my Etsy-shop:

Commissioned Works: Mjöllnir

This piece was a commissioned work, look here for the original design: [link]
I tried to be close to the original and to restrict my artistic freedom to the parts that left no other possibilities.
It was really fun to do this piece though it was kinda tricky, too - just send me more challenges like that!

Recent works: to the bone

After the snow has melted away, many many forgotten cow bones occured - something that happens if you have dogs and a big garden...
Instead of throwing them away, I started to create some nice new pieces of art:
Some pendants made of cow bone - just now my favourite kind of work...

The first pendant is inspired by an old carving in Urnes style, but slightly changed.
The second one is one of my own designs - a typical viking-style beast I used a few times on leather so far - this one actually gave me the idea to start again with a bit of bone-carving, simply because I wanted to see this pattern in another medium. This one is my own and won't be sold - sorry!
The Mjölnir-pendant is also self designed - actually while doing it - but I am pretty satisfied with all 3...