Buffalo Spoon Workshop - Thermopolis

Buffalo Horn Spoon Workshop

This is a rare opportunity to use Buffalo Horn and to learn the complete process of making horn spoons, starting with the whole horn, which is rather rough to begin with - so lots of sanding and scraping to get the outer surface of the horn smooth and clear. Then we will cut and form and shape beautiful horn spoons of Buffalo Horn.

Heating the horn makes it very pliable; once formed, it is quenched in cold water to harden in the shape you form. The same spoon can be heated and formed several times for the perfect shape. Each horn has its own special characteristics that will lead to ideas of bird handles or sheep head handles. Buffalo horn has a beautiful, distinctive warm black color, unlike anything you have ever seen.

About Tom Lucas

Tom Lucas always had a deep desire to create art about Western culture.  Born and raised in Wyoming, his lifestyle as a cowboy, mountain man, hunter, trapper, and outdoorsman has formed the foundation of his art. His life experience lent to his ability to capture the cultures and lifestyles of all the peoples of the American West.

Tom Lucas’s interest and passion for ancestral tool making has led him to be documented on PBS films that have documented Tom making Big-horn sheep bows, a lost art artform that is known by a handful of individuals in “Archers of the Yellowstone.”  His knowledge and expertise in making many Ancestral tools has been documented in  “The Sheep-Eaters: Life in the Mountains.”

Known as Tomahawk Tom in the Mountain Man arena, Tom has mastered replicating Indian artifacts (Big-horn sheep bows, War-bonnets, beaded clothing and moccasins, horn spoons, knives, and arrowheads), many of which are subjects in his paintings and are on exhibit in museums throughout Wyoming. Tom grew up on the Wind River Reservation and learned to make traditional Native American tools from Shoshone and Arapaho