Official Luthiers Forum!

There has been a little bit of talk in other threads about cutting nuts or saddles from cow bone. What qualities would you look for when shopping at the pet store for dog bones. Could you use fresh bone from the butcher and dry it somehow. How would you know it is completely dry.

Anybody have experiance in making nuts this way?

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

Sounds like a lot more trouble than it's probably worth to me... Is there a benefit to using cow bone?

personally I would not use newly or recently buchered bovine bone. It will have a lot of boi-oils in it. much safer to buy processed blanks.

Chuck, skip the trip to the butcher's shop (unless yer picking up some ribeye).

Head to the pet store and find a nice sized dog bone or two; it shouldn't run you more than ten bucks or so. Some bones are large enough to get wider 'through' saddles as well as nuts.

Practice making both nuts and saddles out of the bone. Even if you only end up with three or four nuts you've still saved some $$$ for the price of the dog bone versus three or four nuts from any lutherie supply house not to mention the cost of s/h.

Yeah, buy the processed bone from the pet store which is sterilized.

I buy femurs from my local butcher with the knuckles sawn off, boil and degrease them myself. It's not really a big deal at all, and they come from a local farm, grain and pasture fed, etc. It may sound finicky to seek out "organic" free range femurs, but I believe an animal that eats well and puts it's legs to use will have healthier bones. It's got to be better than bones from some 10 year old, steroid injected, pellet fed dairy cow with osteoporosis that was killed when it's milk production dropped in it's 3'x8' stall somewhere in China.

It may or may not translate to a difference in end quality, but I do know I at least get thicker walls and better yield from these bones than from pet store bones. I've used plenty of pets store ones too, and they work just fine if you choose them well. I just feel the healthier bones may offer slightly better quality, and certainly better yield per bone. I just boiled up a pair of buffalo femurs from a local farm a few weeks ago. Most of that bone is soaking in a few jars of white gas to degrease right now.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Way to go David Collins, most folk don't have access.

I just might ask my butcher next time I'm in Kroger.

I have a big old steel pot outside and it'd be fun to boil some bones.

The pet store bones work for me too.

I learned a lesson from the pearl guys.

After sawing to uniform thickness I hot hide glue to a carrier board and run them through the thickness sander.

Next day, soaked off the board, I glue 'em up and sand the other side.

That way they are all the same thickness.

I also buy blanks because the are so easy to get finished and on the guitar.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Michael, I believe cow bone is what you'd get from Stew-Mac or LMi if you order bone nut, saddle or bridge pins.

David, thanks so much. I think I'm going to give it a try. How long you recon you steep your bone in white gas? Week or so?

Bruce, great idea on using the Jet to thickness the bone. Thanks for sharing.

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

In the past I've scraped all the meat and fat from the bone I can, then boiled it 3 times (in fresh water each time) to clean out the marrow and remove all the fat. By the third boil, you shouldn't see much fat or oils in the water. Then I let them dry for a couple days, cut it in to moderate sized sections, and let it sit for a week or so in white gas to soften and pull out the last of the fats and grease. I think a number of petroleum distillates will work fine - a bowmaker friend told me turpentine is traditionally used as well, and I'd be willing to be gasoline would work just fine as well.

One thing I learned the hard way not to do, is use a pressure pot. I tried it thinking the higher temperature would speed things up, but I think I actually just drove the fats further in to the pores in the bone than an open boil would. The first time I did it I just hung the bones from a tree for a few weeks to let the weather and the animals take care of most of the work before I started the boiling. I think I'll go back to this with the next batch, as it did seem to take less to degrease them. I think bones don't naturally contain much grease or fats to begin with, but rather get contaminated as it's heated and boiled. I not really sure, but it seems to make sense.

I tried buffalo femurs on this last batch, assuming they would be a bit larger or have thicker walls to offer a better yield. Not so. It's really hard to tell them from the cattle bone from what I can tell so far actually. If anything, they seemed a bit more difficult to degrease than the cattle bone, though since I only do this maybe twice a year I may be imagining it. I think next time I will either leave then hanging outside longer to take care of more of the dirty work, or halve them lengthwise and scrape out the marrow before boiling. The less soft tissue you start with in the pot, the easier they are to degrease.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Kept waiting for Waddy to post here (before I did) but I never knew cow bones had nuts.

Beat feet,

Mike

I buy half of a beef shank, cut the meat off the bone and remove the marrow. Then I pressure cook the bones for about 30 minutes. I rough out blanks on the band saw and boil them to remove any residual oil. I doesn't take much effort. I think it's the marrow that makes the bones greasy. Finally, I make a beef stew and the bones are then essentially a free byproduct.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

David, or Ken,
Do you have any pictures of nuts you've made from fresh bone? Do you soak them in bleach water to get them white at some point. By the way, what exactly is vintage bone? I know what vintage means but just wondering where they find old cow bone?

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

I cut mine from Camel femur, camels have very hard working lives and tend to live much longer than your average cow so the bone is worked hard and consequently gets much harder than cow bone. The Aussie builders should have access to plenty of camel bone, and mine comes from a Geo friend in Saudi, but I'm not sure where the US builders can get it. Night raid on a zoo maybe?

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Mine come from LMI........

And some of you have called me cheap............

Chuck--

Most references to vintage bone really mean unbleached bone. Its sort of a mottled light yellowish color. Bleaching will make it closer to white. Soaking the blanks in a container of Clorox will get the job done. Check every couple of days until you are at the hue you want.

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

Ken, if you had no problems with pressure cooking, I'll have to assume my problems were from not removing the marrow or cleaning it well enough before hand.

As to bleach, I'm no expert but it's my understanding that bleach can actually harm the bone. I've heard hydrogen peroxide (the plain old low concentration drug store kind) recommended as just as effective but gentler on the bone. I've never actually bleached though - if cleaned well it's already pretty white, just not stark bright white.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Bruce do they have Harter House Grocery there? I think they started as a butcher place, but have good bone and cuts sometimes.

I've tried bleaching bones, with bleach, and like David suggests it can harm the bone. I left several pieces (home processed) in a container and watched for the whiteness level to match a starlet's teeth. Must have left them in too long, because the bone came out chalky and somewhat softened.
If you try this technique, just monitor it closely and don't leave them in as long as I did!

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

This is a great thread and inspired me to get some bone and attempt processing my own.

I took a trip to the local butcher and asked about the availability of cow femur. The butcher asked me what I wanted it for and then quickly also said never mind I don't want to know.... I assured the guy (Randy) that my intentions were honorable and whipped out my IPhone and proceeded to show him some pics of my guitars. Wouldn't ya know it Randy is a guitar player and a pretty good one too!

Anyway he was happy to help and even offered to cut the femur any way that I wanted him to. I had the knuckles cut off and he only charged me $5 for the lot since I make guitars.

For cleaning the bone I wanted to try something different after reading this thread. Most of all I wanted to use something benign and non toxic or flammable so here is what I came up with and it worked fantastic:

1) Scrape all the meat, fat, yuck, etc that you can off the bone.

2) Place in a pot of water on a low boil for one hour.

3) Remove the bone and use a sharp paring knife as a scraper to remove all of the remaining yuck. A toothbrush worked great to poke the marrow out and then to scrub inside of the bone.

NOTE: If you have a dog be prepared to give them a sedative in as much as my pal Sony went nuts during this entire process salivating and drooling all over the place......

4) Wash the pot well, add new fresh water and here is the kicker, 2 tsps of Dawn or a similar dishwasher detergent. Drop in the bone, simmer on a low boil for about 1/2 an hour.

5) This time when you remove the bone from the water it is not very greasy at all. Scrape and brush off any remaining yuck.

6) Clean pot again add clean water with the detergent and simmer for 1 hour.

That's it, the bone comes out with no hint of grease at all and is "bone" dry to the touch the next day.

David Collins has some concern that I may have boiled fat into the pores of the bone so before you try this please wait a few days. I will be at David's next week and we are going to use his saw, his is more manly than mine..., to cut this stuff up and see what we have. I'll report back then on if the method above is worthy of consideration.

Thanks!

I've spent a lot of time lately cutting bone blanks to send to the UK to have 19th C. Martin style replica "Ivory" friction pegs turned.
The biggest and best prepared bones that I found were in the local Petsmart store.
They carry a large cleaned shank bone which will yield a good sized blank for pegs and certainly multiple nuts or saddles.
As you look through them (this is the "tibia" of the hind leg) choose the one that has the biggest triangular end (up towards the knee) as well as the thickest walls and the heaviest.......they're not all the same.
I think they are around $7.99 each.

Here in Finland we are quite used to use moose shinbone, excellent stuff. Very dense, good quality bone very easily available to all those who have friends with licence to hunt!

Chuck -
I asked the same question a while ago. Got great ifom posted below. I started trying a few with some cowbone that I got from the grocery store -

Great info here from a former museum curator who had some strong ideas about ensuring that ALL the fat was removed from the bone with whitegas.
http://www.bearmeadow.com/build/materia ... clean.html

The key takeaways for me were - MAKE SURE you get all teh grease out of the bone, and
DON'T use bleach to whiten the bones - it softens the bone material over time. He suggests Hydrogen Peroxide.

Mine's been in a coffee can with the white gas for two weeks and still it's not discolored - maybe most of the fat came out with the boiling. Hmmm

I also buy blanks from LMI, SAGA, or StewMac.

But it's really nice to have huge sizes to work from for that odd guitar or repair.

Scott K. sent me some Giraffe bone he uses for knife scales or pistol grips and I really like it. It was a greasy as can be but cleans up easily in white gas, someone had already removed all the gross stuff.

So, if you run across some giraffe bone, grab it.

White Gas = Coleman Fuel at Walmart.

Or, Lacquer thinner works really well.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

It is fun making your own and with a little practice.... or a LOT of practice in my case... you can whip out an appropriately shaped nut or saddle blank in no time.

As for cost saving - yes. Folks in the business with repairing and building know that for repair work it's not easy to predict what sizes you will require. You have to be good-to-go with thru-saddles, saddles of different thicknesses, and the same holds true for nuts. A strat nut requires very little but a guitar with a thick fret board and a 15 degree angled back head stock may need a slightly higher nut blank than what is commercially available. So in addition to the cost of predictive preemptive stocking of bone blanks they can add up if you wish to be in a position to not require your customers to wait for vendors, shipping.

Another reason, at least that comes to my mind was already mentioned. Some nut blanks in the sizes available commercially lack the height for some applications - you can't buy what you need always anyway.

There is also the issue of how well one fits nuts and saddles. A very well fitted nut and saddle are only two quick swipes with 120 grit from no longer being well fitted.... Saddle slots are not always uniform as are nut slots.... and getting things perfect may require a few tries and a couple of blanks.

And lastly from me for now I have not always been satisfied with the blanks that I received in terms of color and hardness.

So what you see above cost me $5.00 but out of this I will get many more blanks than I could purchase for $5.00, have control over the processing and know what I have and I have the option to cut it up in the sizes that I need when I need them.

Besides Randy the butcher now after sitting on my front porch and having a few while jamming together is more then happy to make sure I get the best steaks.... Life is good!

I use deer foot bone.Much denser than cow bone.The older the animal, the better as they get denser with age and most cows are buctured at a young age.