Official Luthiers Forum!

For those of you who have an application requiring a black nut you now have a bone alternative.

https://www.stewmac.com/luthier-tools-and-supplies/materials/nuts-and-saddles/black-bone-nut-blank/

I do have some concerns though especially after reading the statement where StewMac is recommending washing one's nuts... prior to installation on a guitar to prevent any of the black color from bleeding onto the mating surfaces of the guitar.

As you know some makers install the nut prior to finishing with Martin being one of them, Gibson as well. It's a look, finished on nuts that I like and it's also something looked for with the vintage guitar collector community where originality is king.

I do wonder if washing one's nuts... is good enough when a nut is installed on an unfinished neck and then the neck is shot with solvent based finish. Might be a good idea to purchase some sacrifice pieces of these and do some testing before finding out that the color is not as fixed as we had hoped.

Lastly I've used black Ram's Horn before when I needed black nut material and it was disappointing. First horn material and I speak of antlers is often very soft and not at all as long lasting as bone. Can you say toe nail...... because that is what's it's like only black.

Next when you polish your nuts... to a high shine as I do black ends up looking just like shiny black plastic. This led me to unbleached bone where the bone is harder anyway not going through the bleaching process but it still looks.... organic without the glaring white color.

I'll be interested to see what anyone who tries these out discovers and reports hopefully back here.

Thanks for that Hesh. Maybe I'm missing something but Rams horn is keratin. Antlers such as deer or elk, are bone. The solid, non-porous tips or thicker parts at the base are plenty hard enough for nut material but aren't black. I believe water buffalo horn, which is also keratin, is sold as black nut material quite frequently.

Thanks Darrell Yes Bone is preferred and keratin is to be avoided. The black horn material we used and then pitched because it was too soft was billed as black Rams horn and it came from LMI. Anyway the point I am trying to make is that I discovered that black nut material, whatever the hell it was... when you succeed in getting every scratch off it and polish it on a buffer looks just like black plastic

I think it's very possible that dyed black bone nuts would buff out to look like black plastic too.

These just went on sale in UK.
https://www.radiusdishuk.com/on-sale/Bone-Nut-and-Saddle-Blanks-p732456765

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Wow they even make the highly subjective claim that unbleached bone nuts make for warmer tone. It may, who knows it's subjective as can be but I would not make the claim especially to loofiers who are typically born skeptics.

I agree that bleaching softens the bone a slight amount and we use unbleached bone as a result. But we are chasing a harder material not a subjective claim of impact on tone.

I also prefer the esthetic of unbleached bone - Do you have an opinion about camel bone? I don't think I can tell the difference. Camel does sounds more exotic on the hang tag.

I've got a bunch of water buffalo horn if anyone wants to give that a try.

Tschüß - M

I have some personal history with a very nasty camel long ago and far away.... They can be very disgusting creatures who spit on you and worse at times....

That aside camel bone is excellent and I have crafted it before into guitar parts after hearing from Colin Symonds who used to frequent this forum that it was in his opinion superior to cow bone. I think they are both excellent and I completely agree on the beauty of unbleached bone regardless of the source.

We buff our bone parts to a very high polish and the color variations and other interesting features of unbleached stuff just make it look great in my opinion.

Cows aren’t exactly saints…

My former father-in-law had lamas that we used as pack animals in the Olympic mountains - they are pretty much short camels - *ssholes!

Tschüß, M

!!!

In his defence he does say "apparently" not that it does...

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.