Handle materials: How to tell bone from ivory

E

elementfe

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A friend had a tenant who did scrimshaw as a hobby. When he moved out suddenly and left boxes of scrap ebony and ivory (cue the singers!), I got the whole batch.
Some of the scraps are obviously one thing or another, but a lot are little slabs, perfect for small knife handles, that I haven't a clue how to identify.
Seems like using elephant ivory for the wrong thing might be problematic...

How do you tell ivory from bone from walrus tusk, etc? There's quite a variety in this forty pounds of scrap...

Thanks!
Andy G.
 
Ivory has a definately different look,but its hard to describe.Post up some pics and we can tell you.Its only problematic under certain circumstances,like shipping out of the country.Pre ban ivory is legal to buy,sell,and use to my knowledge.Heres some real ivory.
IMG_0008.jpg
One way to tell is by looking is at the ends you can see a crosshatch pattern.Nothing else is really like it.
 
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Not an absolute Del. I've got a small Indian/Asian elephant tusk that looks more like oosik than ivory. A very disappointing purchase back in the late 60's. Hmmmmm......faux oose......maybe I'll dig that tusk back out of the dark dusty place.
 
crex,
In my experience..................
(insert post from above)

I know there are few absolutes, however I believe that with the above advice sorting should be rather quick and with 40 lbs to go through, if he makes an error on a piece or two, well he did get the stuff for free. Any questionable pieces he could post pics of.
The crosshatching at the ends is a good tip as well and that will help you seperate the elephant from the walrus(elephant has crosshatching, walrus does not)
Thanks,
Del
 
To tell if it's ivory it will have a very distinct smell when you place on it a very hot pin. The bone will smell very different. This will at least allow you to start on separating. Sure then perhaps you will be able to find out which ple is which. Frank
 
Then you have a burned pin mark on the material.
It's best to learn what to look for. Bone has Haversian canals-little pores that blood flows through. Ivory doesn't have them.
 
Sorry Del, you are correct. I intended to add that even with the porosity in the tusk I have, the spirographic cross hatching is still easily identifiable. Have used enough irovy and bone to think I can't be fooled. Then I bought a "grab-bag" of bone slabs from Rik at the Blade few years ago and three labelled cowbone turned out to be hippo ivory. I let label and coarse grind trick me into not looking close. Didn't notice until I had already cut/shaped/glued/pinned. Kept thinking how it was really nice clean fine bone, and as mentioned above, it did not smell "right" (different stink), but pushing a deadline so......
Ergo - I made a simple 3 finger caper with very nice hippo ivory scales (definitley a pig with red lips). The new owner was very happy (much more so than I). He wants to bring it back for some more lipstick - scrimshaw work, but I don't know if I can stand to look at that knife again. You can bet I check them all close now.
I just spent the last hour digging around in my "archived" handle material looking for that friggin tusk...no luck so far....so I'm back in the cool with a cup of joe trying to remember where the heck.......getting old ain't all it's cracked up to be.
 
Thanks for the tip about the smell when it smokes, whatever I used has a distinctive smell when sanded, so a few tests will be very helpful.
Crex, that's hilarious- people like what they like. I'm still baffled when I lay out a bunch of knives and folks pass over the raindrop damascus with the polished brass furniture and grab the railroad spike- "Wow, now that's really a cool knife!"
It IS a cool knife (coughletteropenercough) but....but....

Here are a couple of fairly poor photos from my blog (elementfe.blogspot.com). I'm not seeing the crosshatching pattern on this piece.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-K9nK-v-WQ...ipCrud04/s1600/2011-07-26+10.11.19-735218.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-C12dTRN8_...dNcghAow/s1600/2011-07-26+10.13.02-780711.jpg

Thanks for the tips!
Andy
 
There is no way to definitively tell the difference between elephant ivory and any other ivory without chemical analysis. You can definitely tell the difference between bone and ivory, though.
 
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