pinokeeo

Hi All.

I think I'm rested now. I have been working on lots of projects for the past few weeks. I also did my first ever carving show. I sold a few items and learned a lot. I also picked up some diamond willow while I was there, so I'll be posting my walking sticks when I get them done.

For now, here's a pair of the earrings that I carved from a piano key. I made several pairs using the scrimshaw method of carving. That means that it was scratched into the surface, but not all the way through. I sold a few of them, but here's a pair that was left over. They are only one inch high by 1/2 inch wide. I used a nail for carving and a light box with the pattern behind the ivory. They aren't perfect, but I'm pretty happy with my first attempt.

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I cannot master those things which I have not tried.

gremlin

Those are pretty cool. Where do you find real ivory piano keys to carve?

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pinokeeo

Well, if you remember back last summer when I was gifted a piano, and had to have it moved and tuned. The guy who did the work on it saw some of the recycled pieces that I had made, and in November he called me up and asked me to come and pick up some piano parts that he was going to toss out.

When I got to his shop, I got this story about a 150 year old piano that had been in a house fire. They couldn't salvage the piano, so they removed all the parts that they thought would be useful. He saved the piano hammers and some of the keys for me to mess around with.

As soon as I can get them up, I'll post the pictures of what I did with the hammers and a few pics of my process for cleaning up the ivory.

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I cannot master those things which I have not tried.

gremlin

That's pretty cool. It pays to know people!

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gma2rjc

I like those! What a cool idea and how nice of him to think of doing that for you.

I'm looking forward to the next pics.

Barb

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May your blessings be more.
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Angela

Those are very nice Pinokeeo! Do the symbols have a meaning?

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Angela ~ Mom to two great girls (18 & 13) ~ Novice at many different crafts ~Master of none
~ But I have fun trying!!! ~

I'm also blogging about my crafting. I'd love to see you there. Please visit Crafty Distractions and say hello.

My daily project was completed on January 25, 2012, but you can still visit my blog The Daily Turtle if you would like to see my adventures making or photographing a turtle every day for a year.

pinokeeo

Yep! This particular symbol means "friend" or "friendship". It's a Japanese Kanji symbol, which means Japanese shorthand. The ones I sold were "love", "luck" (which made sense since we were selling at a casino), the kokopelli symbol for the god of fertile land, and several tribal clan symbols, which also made sense since we were on indian land.

Here are a couple of in-progress shots for cleaning the ivory. The first pic is the way it looked when I got it. #2 shows yours truly, scraping away the soot and burn marks. And #3 is scraped clean before sanding and waxing it.

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__________________
I cannot master those things which I have not tried.

Angela

Very cool! I expected piano keys to be thicker. (Can you tell I don't play piano?) That looks like it took a lot of scraping.

__________________
Angela ~ Mom to two great girls (18 & 13) ~ Novice at many different crafts ~Master of none
~ But I have fun trying!!! ~

I'm also blogging about my crafting. I'd love to see you there. Please visit Crafty Distractions and say hello.

My daily project was completed on January 25, 2012, but you can still visit my blog The Daily Turtle if you would like to see my adventures making or photographing a turtle every day for a year.

weareborgswife

How amazing

Angela- the "keys" are made of wood covered in ivory or plastic.

Now, if anything should happen to my piano, I know what to salvage!

pinokeeo

Yeah, the ivory and ebony only refers to colors these days. The old piano that I have doesn't even have ebony keys. They are painted black to look like ebony. The keys are still ivory though.

I had a conversation with a fellow who told me that the old grand pianos had solid ivory keys. I don't know if that's true, but it would be great to find something like that. It would probably be worth a fortune, though.

As for the scraping, it really didn't take much time. I did about twenty of them in an hour.

__________________
I cannot master those things which I have not tried.