Good morning, I'm Brandon Oswald and we're back here on the homestead in the cabin on
another beautiful winter day. Today we are going to be working with cowhorn
in a very recent episode we made a comb out of this cow horn, the plastic of the 18th century.
But today we're going to try something a little different we are going to make a horn spoon, one
of the most common household eating utensils of the time period. In the comb episode we use just a
pure open flame to heat the horn one of the two main heating methods. The other method is using
hot oil. There's a common misconception, and I even did this myself when I was younger, of using
water. Now the problem is is water only gets to 212 degrees. That's not hot enough horn has to be
300 to 350 degrees and that's why we're using oil today. If you have a good relationship with your
wife spouse or you're single you use your oven at home that'll work just as well. While the comb
was very labor intensive yeah once we got it flat then we had to cut each tooth and each tine and
scrape it and make it smooth so there's a lot of hand work into it. The spoon however once we
flatten it and get the basic shape cut out of the spoon we'll heat it up and put it in this
mold and then we've cast a spoon then we just have to finish it. If you were a horner at the time you
could cut out a dozen of these spoon blanks and just heat them up and one after the other mold one
spoon right after the other. That's why horners of the time period would make a lot of spoons
because they're really cheap and easy to make. To be efficient with our material our cow horn we
want to lay it out and we want to cut it to length down the middle and flatten it out that way we can
lay out our spoons and get as many as we can out of this so we don't waste any of the material.
We have our pieces cut out the next step is to flatten them and we're going to use the oil like
we said before to heat it up soft enough so that we can flat it. Now the oil has to be hot enough
and there's a little trick for that and what we do is we take just a little bit of water and a stick
or the end of a wooden spoon and get just a little bit of moisture on it and stick it in the oil
and it should bubble. If it's sizzling just a little bit it needs to be hotter if you can hear
it popping it's good it's hot enough. So we're ready to dip so you always want to use tongs you
want to get it to such a point to where you can dip it and then put it into your mold now you
want to let it sit in there for oh about 20 to 30 seconds so it gets hot enough and it gets pliable.
You don't want to do just a quick dip because it won't get hot enough. Drain
off the oil and we'll start just a little bit and you'll tell right away if it's soft enough.
Today we're using just vegetable oil in the time period they would have used cod liver oil
or lard or whatever kind of fatty substance that will turn to liquid when it gets hot.
Okay, we're heating it up and it's just a back and forth process we'll heat it flatten
it a little bit and heat it flatten it a little bit until we get it nice and flat.
So we have our flattened horn piece and if you notice there's no charring on the comb video
you saw the char because we used the open flame the oil doesn't do that so it gives it a nice
smoother finish and less cleanup work. Our next step is to cut out the rough shape of
the spoon and it'll be just a flat spoon shape and then we'll re-dip it and form it in our mold.
Well, it's looking good looking good we just have to trim this up a little bit
make it nice and smooth. And once we get that we're going to put it back
in the mold dip it one more time put it back in the mold just to give a nice final
full curve to the spoon give it a good body. This is the first time I've ever done this
ever made a spoon or dipped it in oil and it's going pretty good you're getting a nice spoon
shape there. All I want to do is trim this up a little bit you know make that nice and round
and we're going to dip it and form it one more time to give it that nice final shape.
Here it is our finished spoon, went pretty well. My first time ever doing
anything like this worked with horn before but never with the mold or the hot oil.
And you know can be straightened up but that's for the next one.
The more you do things the better you get I really enjoy working with horn it's a wonderful
material and it looks good if you have any suggestions of any future projects I could
work on I would love to know leave it in the comments and once again thank you for watching.