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Last year I traveled a bit in Costa Rica, actually bought a bunch of mahogany trees but anyway, I came across some local artists who were making beautiful jewelry pieces out of Tagua. It's a nut of some sort. Whitish in color, looks a lot like ivory hence it's name. Roughly translated it means elephant plant. IT's very very hard and apparently carves like ivory.

I am just curious if anyone has heard of it and especially if you have used it for nuts and saddles or other inlay.

My dad (who does jewelry) has messed around with it before, and said it's some pretty cool stuff. I was checking around on ebay for any large enough for guitar nuts and saddles, and it looks like most are less than 2 inches in their longest direction. So you could make a few steel string nuts from a big tagua, but they're probably too small for saddles and classical nuts. Saddles could be done in 2 pieces though.

Definitely let us know how it goes if you try it

Heard it's nice for inlay on dark fretboards. The trick is slabing it up.

I just happened to get some at Gilmer this weekend. It's off-white and takes a good shine. What I got wouldn't be big enough for a saddle, others might have some bigger ones I guess. I think it would be good for inlay. It's hard enough to burn my dremel blade.

Lee Valley carried these at one time but I'm not sure if they still do or not.They are a form of nut I believe.

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Padma had a thread about it, sort of. I think he was more focussed on the bondo he used to afix it to a board so he could slice it up.

Mike

You mean this one

viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=24089&p=327568&hilit=Tagua%2C+bondo#p327568

Lee Valley does still carry tagua nuts. The problem with using them for any sort of longer piece is that all of the nuts have a void in the middle. So while you might think you could cut a long piece straight through the widest part of the nut you can't, because of the void. It would be tough to get either a nut or a saddle from most of the tagua nuts that I've seen.
Carvers like to soften them in water first before carving them.
If you want to slab it up you can sand one side flat on a belt sander, then glue the nut to a piece of scrap ply. Run the nut on the ply past your tablesaw or bandsaw blade and you will get perfect slabs with a bit of ply attached. Knock off the ply and you have a slab.

Thanks all.

I wouldn't have a problem with 3 piece saddles or 2 piece nuts. One common guitar repair for under saddle pick ups is to segment the saddle anyway so there is precedence for it. And I would think that a two piece nut bonded to gether in such a way that the glue joint is not under a string slot ought to be ok. I don't know might consider is one day. I just think the idea of it is so cool and it finishes beautifully.

I was thinking mabey bridge pins or tuner knobs would be nice.

Tuner knobs... Yes!

Yeah absolutely!