Bighorn sheep horn ruined?

[David Peterson]

Hey guys,
I have an interesting situation and I was hoping to get some much needed help. I bought some bighorn sheep horns with magic marker on them, thinking that I would cut them up for knife scales. Standing in the freezing rain all day at auctions does pay off sometimes. Well, they are a matched set and looking at them tonight I'm having second thoughts about cutting them up. They are extremely hard to come by and I'd really like to salvage them and mount them on the wall if I could. The trouble is, someone used red marker on the inside of one horn and it doesn't want to come off easily. Since horn is basically porous, I think the marker is in the hair fibers. I tried sanding them with 120 grit and it does come off, but looks polished and not natural. I thought some of you that work with horn handle material may have an idea how to clean these up. If all else fails, they will make dynamite scales. Thought I'd at least try to salvage them though. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks.

-Dave

[Gene Chapman]

Just a thought, you might try a dilute solution of Oxi Clean in dilute solution with a "Q" tip, maybe it would bleach the red marker.

Similiar problem, but once I got some machinist bluing, the kind that evaporates on some antler. It wicked into the antler and I ended up throwing the antler away. it wicked too far into the antler and ruined it.

[David Peterson]

Gene,
Thanks a lot for the tip on Oxy Clean. I tried it with a toothbrush and it got the surface red marker off, but it still shows a bit. I wondered about painting it with a brown cover up paint. I just can't seem to cut into such a "nice rack".