No one knows for certain who the first person was to create scrimshaw; however, chances are his inspiration came not so much from a creative muse as it did from a state of boredom.

According to Tom DeMont, owner of Edgartown Scrimshaw, scrimshaw originated on American whaling ships in the 1700s. Because whaling was so dangerous, men were unable to work at night, and scrimshaw became a way for them to occupy their idle hours.

But in those early years, the term referred to the shaping of tools from whalebone and whale teeth. It wasn’t until the early 1800s that decorative scrimshaw, as we know it, came into fashion, depicting “lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves,” to quote Herman Melville.

Tom explains that whale teeth and whalebones were originally used because they were in such plentiful supply, but as the whalers journeyed farther from home, stopping for provisions at exotic ports, they discovered that elephant, warthog, and walrus tusks were ideal for scrimming as well. They also used the tagua nut, an extremely hard and close-grained nut found in South America and known as vegetable ivory.

Today, because of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, scrimshanders are prohibited from using new tusks from elephants or bones from whales. But those from extinct species such as the woolly mammoth or the American mastodon are not only legal but also more plentiful than ever due to the receding polar ice caps.

So let’s get to it; here’s how to create your own scrimshaw: You take that old woolly mammoth tusk you’ve had hanging around and sand it down. In the old days, sailors used a jackknife, or maybe even a piece of glass, to scrape down all the ridges off a sperm whale tooth. Today we can use power tools to polish the surface, just as a jeweler would polish gold or silver. After the surface is prepared, there are two ways to create the design.

One way is to take India ink and coat the entire surface so it’s jet black. With a sharp metal point or other scribe, you etch your design onto the surface. When the ink is wiped off, it fills into the etched areas.

Tom prefers to sketch out the basic designs in pencil, directly onto the surface, and then etch the picture with a scribe. Shading is done by a technique called stippling, which requires hundreds of tiny dots. When all the etching has been completed, the ink is then applied into the inscribed areas (a Q-tip dipped in ink works well) and allowed to dry. The use of a sealer is optional.

I asked Tom about the derivation of the term scrimshaw, and he said that no one knows for certain; one theory suggests that it comes from a similar sounding Algonquin word meaning “lying about doing something unproductive.”

How values have changed. I do my lying about in front of the TV with a bag of Cheetos. Etching intricate scenes on a sperm-whale tooth would be the height of ambition.