Official Luthiers Forum!

I don't wish to belabor a well-discussed subject, but the archived posts still leave me to wonder about ivory vs. bone vs. all others. I have a lot of materials that have been discussed as suitable, or more to the point, possible nut and saddle materials. I have a few bits of bone but I have pounds of mammoth ivory in white through deep butterscotch. All of it is dense and even-grained with only rare cracks, voids or layer separations and I would assume entirely suitable for nuts, saddles, tie-blocks, and so on. As I have plenty of the stuff and am quite used to working it for jewelry and objets d'art, is there a compelling reason to use bone instead, especially in the context of nylon vs. steel, as well.

Also, Dennis Leahy has advocated jade as a possible departure, and as I, too, am a faceter-lapidarist with a ready supply of muttonfat jade and other nephritic varieties, what drawbacks might there be to jade and other gemstones such as, say, chrysoprase? Mass would be a drawback, I'd think, but maybe I'm missing something.

I cast lead crystal and pate-de-verre, too. Any thoughts?

What else has been tried on classicals and what were the results? I also have corian, micarta, graphite, recon stone, MOP, coral, tagua, horn, antler and God only knows what else, but am especially interested in ivory vs. bone, and stone.

Caveats for any of these materials would be especially helpful. All speculations are welcome, too. It all sounds a bit mandarin, I'm sure, but I really am fascinated by the possibities.

all I know about classicals is they seem to run more along traditional lines,as far as style and materials, with some straying a bit from that as of late. but the reality is you can do whatever you want to, however if your goal is to sell the instrument,too much variation from tradition might have youcaught up.. or maybe you will start a new tradition ! .. but if you want to get rid of some of your butterscotch mammoth ivory.... I will tell you how it works out on a steel string !

I will also be a tester of the butterscotch ivory - on a 4 different classicals - better send some extra so I can select just the right piece.

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