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I'm interested in using some bone from the butcher to make bone nuts and saddles from scratch. Does anyone have any experience with this process? How to treat the bone prior to cutting it? Is beef the best option? Which bones to ask the buther for? Can a bandsaw be used to cut it into strips? Any other advice? Thanks!

I use deer bone from the hind feet,the one the hoof is attached to.The older the animal, the better for denseity, so that's why i use deer because cows a usually bucthered at a young age and aren't as dense.I do use a bandsaw to cut lengthwise and then remove all the marrow because thats where all the grease is.Just scrape it out of the bone after cutting it lengthwise.Then i soak in hot soapy bleach for a few days and then let dry.You can get 8 saddles fron one deer this way.Here is a pic. of what they look like after cutting and cleaning.Hope this helps. Mark

At the pet store they sell large bones that have been cleaned pretty good. Seems like the package of 2 big bones were about $3. I bandsawed them into blanks and bob's yer uncle.

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Sean Barry documented this a while back at this link. He was also a museum curator so he's spent some time around bones.

http://www.bearmeadow.com/build/materia ... clean.html

Kent

On Sean's web site he clearly states that those large bones may not be degreased enough to use. Here is a quote from that page:
"**I've heard several times that cow bone available in pet stores for dogs is grease-free, though I don't know how they would do that without making it potentially toxic. Perhaps some is, but all of the pet store bones I've examined the past few years have contained some grease, just not evident until one warms the bone in the sun for a few hours. Again, your pet store bone mileage may vary, but to me the stakes are much too high to risk using it."

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Tracy
http://www.luthiersuppliers.com

I doubt they have been prepared like the ones I get from suppliers. When I cut them up, and then disk sand them to rough thickness, they get pretty hot, but don't seem to be greasy. The few I've made that way, it didn't appear to be an issue. Maybe it is?

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