Now the tools you want are not numerous. A very handy, and in some cases indispensable, one is what is called a spokeshave. It is for paring down the rough surfaces. It is a handy tool for woodwork as well, and as it costs only about eighteen pence, it is as well to have one among your tools. Just let me pause here for one instant to repeat a warning I have given more than once before. Never buy bad cheap tools. What are called boys’ boxes of tools are, as a rule, mere toys—an insult to any growing lad who really means to do proper work. Make your own tool-box; buy your tools separately, and see that they are good. Indeed, it would be as well to get them second-hand at a broker’s shop. No matter if they be a little old so long as the steel is good, and the woodwork neither worn nor cracked.
Well, you must have a good knife with several blades—not a mere pot-metal cheese-cutter. This knife will come in handy for paring and for scraping. And what I myself have found very handy is a piece or two of plain window-glass. Glass makes a capital scraper, and when the edge goes off you have only to break it again and you find another. I shouldn’t wonder if you found a piece of sticking-plaster handy too. Do you know how to bind up a cut? Well, get any dirt there may be in it out first. Then, when the bleeding has stopped, bring the edges together with two or three narrow bits of plaster, leaving a tiny outlet for oozing, put a rag over all, and there you are.
The spokeshave is only to be used in paring down all the rough portions of your horn, and you must work with, and not against, the rough laminæ, that is, from and not towards the points of the horn. You will have a difficulty in holding your work, because the spokeshave is best used with both hands. You may fasten the horn in a vice or on the end of a stick, or any other way that occurs to you.
After the spokeshave the knife will come in handy, but you must have an even surface, and all stains must be removed. You will find the horn get harder and whiter beneath, and semi-transparent. It is down to this you want to go, but no farther.
Then after the knife comes your bit of glass, and while working with this, wherever you see any part out of symmetry, work carefully on that till you get all even and nice. When this is done half the work is finished.
When you have pared and scraped and cut down all unevenness, and have at last got a fairly plain surface by dint of hard labour with spokeshave, knife, and glass—perhaps a fine file may have aided you through some intricacies; this tool comes in handy enough when you want to polish bent horns—then you must have recourse to emery-paper. This is very cheap, and is sold in sheets of different fineness at colour shops or oil-merchants’.
Begin by using the roughest, then finer and finer.
Be tidy with your work. The dust that comes off horn is one of the best things in the world for soiling the waistcoat or nether garments. So place your horn over a piece of brown paper. You thus save your dress and save your dust as well. Put the latter in a saucer, and a drop or two of olive or colza oil over it. Mix and use it with a bit of chamois leather to polish with, after you have finished with the emery-paper or emery-paper and water.
If you feel discouraged and disappointed at want of gloss and beauty, depend upon it you have not worked hard enough. So you must go on again. Use next tripoli, or rouge, or both, first mixed with a little olive oil, and finally dry. Tripoli is the name given to a kind of infusorial earth, which was first found in Tripoli. It is now obtained in certain districts of the United States, and in many parts of Europe.
The name rouge may be somewhat misleading, there being so many different kinds of it. Ladies use a rouge composed of chalk and carmine. This will not do so well for polishing horn. I believe, however, if you take equal parts of carbonate of iron and prepared chalk and rub them up together in a mortar, you will form a very nice rouge for the purpose of polishing either horn or plate. Polishers’ putty-powder is another article used for finishing off horns.