Thanks again for joining us on our Sojourn through the Caribbean Islands! In this video Dan makes a conch shell horn from a large conch shell he was given by...
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about really ringing out
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last time when sailing Bella Chandra we
finished up at Cambridge ki swam with
sharks at compass key and then sailed on
for Staniel key
hey guys in this video I'm going to show
you how to make a traditional and very
beautiful conch horn like this one out
of a conch shell that you may have found
on the beach or wherever this is like a
traditional Bahamian thing but I believe
it goes back maybe millennia I don't
know but it's not that complicated but
there's quite a bit you can do to a
conch shell to make it beautiful so
here's a conch shell that I'm going to
prepare and make a horn and I'll show
you guys how to go about doing it this
one has a hole here where they'd remove
the conch itself and it also has a hole
here where the Bahamian people have put
a string through here to hold these
together as a group so they could easily
carry them it's a very beautiful shell
it has lots of pink inside so it's gonna
make a great horn once you've selected
the conch you're gonna make your horn
from the first thing you want to do is
bleach it so you want to fill a bucket
with water and bleach about 70/30 mix
and put your conscience it in the bleach
for about a day some people probably
leave it in for less some people for
more I found about a day seems to work
pretty good for me and when you're done
anything that's in there any like
organic material or coral or anything
that's stuck on the outside should all
fall away and be gone and you want to
rinse it off really good make sure all
the bleach is gone then you'll be ready
to start working on your kanji dry it
out really well I just leave it in the
Sun for a few hours alright so the first
thing you're going to do with your conch
is to cut off the end here to make the
spout where you're going to blow into
the con you want to cut it with the
spiral just take the tip off there the
goal is to have a hole that's about the
size of a dime cut the tip off and the
hole is not quite a dime you might want
to make the hole a little bit bigger by
cutting down a little farther you can
use a hacksaw to do this but from what I
was told and what I've seen the very
best tool to use for this is actually
your angle grinder if you've got one and
a naval grinder with a ceramics blade I
mean any blade it will work I have a
ceramic blade I know it's going to work
better than a metal cutting blade on
shell
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after you've removed the tip here to
create the blow hole you want to then
take the angle grinder and grind along
the edge here and clean up all the sharp
edges here that might hurt your fingers
you just want to have a nice feeling
shell when you're done that's not sharp
I'm gonna hurt somebody so just trim
that off
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okay now you want to bang out this
little piece here on the inside so that
when you blow the air goes where it
needs to go make sure you are wearing
some kind of protective eyewear in case
little pieces go flying and the best way
to do this is with the screwdriver and a
hammer some people use a nail I'm gonna
go with the screwdriver
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so you can see that I've removed the
spiral that's on the inside and now I'm
just gonna clean up this edge a little
bit so there we have it that's about
ready to go but that's gonna be really
hard on your lips so there's something
else we're gonna do there so now you're
blowholes finished you're gonna want to
take something to sand the inside and
clean it up I use a dremel tool with a
sanding bit on the end you can use this
to just get around the inside rim of the
blow hole on the outside rim just make
it nice and where your lips touch it's
smooth and you might even want to use
this to clean up other parts of the show
as well
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so if you're like me you're gonna want
your conch to be a beautiful object that
you can keep onboard decorative smooth
nice to touch and cold and when you blow
it's comfortable and to do that I use
hand files and I'm going to use some
sandpaper that will make it really
smooth and get rid of all the rough
edges and kind of give those finishing
touches after that I'll show you how to
fill those tools in the shell on the
outside
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alright so in the last step is to fill
these holes here with epoxy again these
are the holes that the Bahamian
fishermen had banged through the conch
shell this one was made to release the
conch from inside of its shell so that
it could be you know cooked and eaten or
whatnot
and this hole here was made in order to
string several shells together on a rope
what I'm going to do is fill these in
with epoxy I've seen people use bondo
and filler and lots of things but I
think epoxy is probably the best
permanent way to do it and I have some
on board so that's what I'm gonna do
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all right that's all there is to it and
when you're done you might want to clean
up the epoxy just by sanding it down a
little bit and if you've got any art
skills at all you can mask it with a
little bit of paint like I did and you
should have a beautiful car horn ready
to blow at sunset hopefully you'll have
a sunset like this one
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