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I bought some paua abalone lamalate and it looks great, but I’m very conscious of the environment and respectful of all living things, and I don’t know how these shells are collected. If they are living shells taken out of a natural environment then I don’t think I’ll use them again. But if they are grown on farms, or just empty shells then I would be O.K. with it. I know there are artificial substitutes, but they don’t look as good and it gives the instrument a cheep look. What are your thoughts? Does anyone know where these products come from of how they are made?

I don't know a lot, but I am sure that some are left over from harvest of wild animals for food use. So, how would you feel about deer leather if the deer were harvested for food? The leather would go to waste if not used.

huh!...never looked at it like that....interesting

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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 understand what you are saying. I also use bone on the guitars and I'm O.K. with that, but using shell is a little like using ivory.

Most trees are cut while they are still alive...?

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Plants respond to 'pain' too slowly for people to perceive without time-lapse video, so most people bothered by 'hurting things' see them as fair game. Same response as anything else, though, just too slow to see.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Theres nothing wrong with asking if there is an environmental impact of something your participating in.
If you read the original post its pretty clear that he/she is not asking about shells experiencing pain.

OP, I appreciate your concern, I looked into it a while ago and it seemed okay to me to use a bit of shell for guitars, though I am not an expert in the area.

I always knew carrots had feelings!
Guess that puts the vegetarians in a quandry now.

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Hank Mauel

If your conscious bothers you if they are taking from the wild i don't understand how it doesn't if they are farmed. They are still being killed for your use. Most time the farmed animals are more abused and mistreated then the naturally raised. Have you ever been to a fish farm. I have and i can tell you the fish are so overcrowded in these hatcheries that there barely is a drop of water between each fish. They are so over crowded it is sickening. If it bothers you then don't use shell. You can use wood for your inlays. Many do....Mike

Check out the price of abalone meat and it's clear that the shell is largely a by-product of what is a very lucrative industry in its own right. Good on you for asking the question though.

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Cheers
Pete

Though it will be much more of a pain than calling Kevin Ryan and ordering strips, I'm sure if you put out feelers, you'll find some Californians that live close enough to walk the beach at low tide and pick up a few empty abalone shells (probably eaten by a sea otter.) In central coastal Calif, (north of LA) I always found abalone shells when I walked the beach at low tide. In some, the beauty is hidden as the nacre has lost its polish or the shell surface was colonized by algae or coral - but once you cut down into the shell the color is there.

Of course, I'm talking about red and green abalone from Calif., and it is not as dynamic nor anywhere near the deep blue colors in Paua abalone (which is from Australian and New Zealand waters.) For those, you'll need to find an Antipodean.

To me, shells for shell collectors are very similar to seeing some "big game" animal taxidermied and hung on a wall. I have a very negative reaction to it. It is, to me, not even remotely related to someone hunting or fishing for food that they will eat; it is a twisted and barbaric "bloodsport" (a misnomer though, because there is no sport in it.) The beautiful shells you see in shell collections are almost all collected by divers who take the live animals and kill them ashore for the shells. Shells from animals that have died or were eaten by predators in the wild very quickly deteriorate in beauty as they tumble in the surf.

So yes, it is good to stop and take an ethical look at where our lutherie materials come from.

Bob, Hank, westca-

If I ever open a vegetarian restaurant, I don't think I'll call it "The Screaming Carrot." I think it is wise to view all life as sacred, and like some Native Americans' custom, thank the living thing that we have killed for providing us with food, clothing, and shelter, but I do think we can all sense a distinct line between killing a plant and killing an animal. Those of us who have ever eaten meat that didn't come in a pretty package in a store, i.e. we killed it ourselves, know there is a profound difference. (I wasn't always a vegetarian.)

I'm a joker. I love to laugh and make people laugh, and as a vegetarian, I have heard and can take a wheelbarrow of jokes. But it kinda pulls my chain when someone tries to blur the line between vegetarians and non-vegetarians, by declaring that plants suffer when harvested, or cut, or cooked. I'm sure that plants have measurable electrical responses to a bolt of lightning ripping through the sky and to the resulting clap of thunder, and other measurable electrical responses to micro-droplets of rain water contacting parched root hairs. But that is not fear, or joy. And cutting a carrot does not evoke pain, despite the best efforts of a few researchers to draw that conclusion from some measurable electrical response.

OK, I promise my next 3 posts will be lighthearted!

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

We were in New Zealand on holiday last year. The locals eat the paua abs by the gross. There are piles of blue shells all along the coast. I bought 5 polished shells for about 5 dollars from a kid with a stand along the highway. That will be enough to keep me going for about ten years. So, I don't think they harvest the animals for shell, they eat the animal and the shell is just a pretty by-product. Mikey

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HHG...?

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Thanks to everyone who replied to my qurestion and I'm sorry if my original post was a little confusing.
My concern is not that it is an animal product, I was just concerned about the environment and upsetting the ballance of nature.
I’ve also heard that about 90% of all mahogany sold is acquired through illegal logging. So when you buy this material you are supporting a pirate industry. But I guess that’s another subject. The earth’s resources are not limitless and there are a lot of people who are only interested in making a pile of money without any regard for damage they might be causing. If we’re going to save the planet we have to be mindful of these things. What can I say, I think about this stuff.

Todd: Thanks but what I was trying to point out is that it does not magically appear in bags for us to brew up for our own use.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Trying to be respectful here, but if we are handwringing over the use of abalone or spruce, then maybe we should be a little more introspective into what sorts of paper we use, what our homes are made of, etc.. I say this certainly being aware of the scarcity of some things within our society.

The amount of wood or other products used in a guitar has never struck me as being careless with natural resources. Especially if those products are sustainable and would otherwise be a useless byproduct.

If you don't eat plants, and you don't eat animals, you are probably walking around hungry.....

Speaking of which, I have noticed there is a huge difference between slaughtering a pig and picking a tomato. Maybe it's just me.

I have been a vege for 30+ years. I have a deal with a shoe company that only uses hides from animals that died of old age. I affectionately refer to my latest pair as "gramps"

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In Markham,Virginia

Ethics and aesthetics seem to have some things in common, we all have our own set of opinions within the grey lines of common decency. Outside the lines you are either a psychopath or an avant garde artist with limited appeal.

Personally as a vegetarian my feelings are that we have pushed the balance a bit far in a direction, and to help be more in balance with our environment requires being a bit more gentle with harvesting from the environment.

I would feel better about using shell that was found on the beach then shell as a by product for human food. I like the idea of domestic lumber, but for some reason hide glue does not bother me as much.
I am glad I can't hear carrots scream, those are my ethics, a little here and there, but within some grey lines of decency that I fence in my personality with, and for aesthetics, I think dreads are a funny looking guitar shape.

. . . . .We all got 'em, they all stink
Rob

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I think I may have to take a trip to New Zealand. You guys think I will make it past customs?

“If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.” - Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

I'm another "touchy feely" veggie dude, for what I see as ethical, respect-for-all-life reasons. I'm strict about it but try not to take myself too seriously. I like this quote from actor and veggie James Cromwell (the farmer in Babe): "We don't need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could."

But I also love this that my sister once found on a bumper sticker: "If God had not intended for us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat."

Where to draw the line is indeed tricky and inexact. Of course plants are imbued with the same life force as us and other animals. So the argument that it's all the same and doesn't matter has validity. Something always must die in order for something else to live. And I'm not wiling to forgo eating and living. However, I view different organisms as having varying degrees of this life force or "conciousness" or awareness. So I draw the line according to how I view staying as "low down on the chain" as I can, on having a balanced impact. It is of course arbitrary, one must just choose where they are comfortable. I think plants have very little conscious awareness compared to say fish, who in turn are generally "lower down" the awareness ladder than mammals such as cows. Occasionally we've probably all encountered people who would seem to make cannibalism a moral option, but overall the "nothing that runs, flies or swims" thing works pretty well for me. I guess things like abalone or clams are kind of in-between but I avoid eating these anyway, perhaps mostly because I have lost any taste for "meaty" stuff.

By all the same tokens I prefer to avoid using leather, bone and shell. But I'm less strict about this than ingesting animal products. FI, I haven't bought leather shoes for many years, but I still have my old leather hiking boots. And I love the look of shell, so I'll use it "moderately" as long as I'm more or less comfortable with the overall environmental impact as in the OP's initial query (anyone know if there are concerns about Paua becoming depleted in their natural ecosystem?). I'm pretty ambivalent about bone. I wouldn't consider killing my dog to use his bones on a guitar, so to be at all consistent I have to think similarly about a cow, who I view as similarly evolved. At the same time, I think all luthiery worldwide probably has zero impact on how many bovines are killed, so I can use it without feeling I have a big hand in something I don't like. I am still exploring synthetics. So yah, not perfectly consistent, just like our little world

[/end somewhat OT treatise]

Peace,
Sanaka

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...imagine there were no hypothetical situations...

The one person who probably knows the most about this topic is Chainsaw Chuck Erikson AKA The Duke of Pearl.......



Are you out there Chuck?

Most abalone and Mother of Pearl shell is a secondary product for food based harvesting in the South Pacific and Asia. Some scavenged shell does hit the market but is a very small percentage A large percentage of shellfish that is marketed as inlay shell is ground and blanked out in small peasant fishing and shell prep shops in the Pacific rim of Asia. Fishing and prepping the shell of these animals has been and is the sole livelihood of these people for centuries. So keep in mind that to say these creatures may not or should not be harvested may very well be saying that that these peasant fisherman and their families may not or should not eat.

There is always a two edge sword. Isn’t there?

Everyone can be re-trained. I'm not so specifically talking about these shell-fishermen, but to say that any job is sacrosanct just because it puts food on the table is, well, maybe not looking at the big picture. Drug dealers, illegal weapons dealers, illegal (poaching) loggers, environmental scofflaw corporate heads - they all feed their families from the money they bring in too.

Many jobs have disappeared when resource depletion destroyed their market. I think it is fair to at least wonder about the sustainability of abalone.

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Shaking my head in dis belief

I just said it was a two edged sword. I will add to this by asking what do you think the odds are of that population being retrained and provided with jobs to replace their current?