The employment of mammoth ivory

Donation: I'd like to thank my guitar-friend Klaus from Leverkusen/Germany for his help translating this article! Thank's Klaus!

Like the most know, called the material of tusks from elephants ivory. These tusks of elephants are extension incisors. They are as far as nearly to top streaky with nerves and so from root to short before top hollow and at jaw realy thin. These horn, a mixture of phosphorus- acid chalk, cartilage and moisture can be easyly worked with saws, knives, files and polishmachines. After working it feels wonderful and because of excellent sounded properity it's used as saddles and bridges of acoustic instruments. Ivory is not in any quantity available - sometime it would be weight in gold - and so these exquisite sounded properities make the elephant to a threaten species.
In the Roman aera the animal would be used as fighters and the horn as currency. You can imagine for that reason the Romans had killed nearly all northafrican elephants. Today it's the same. Naturally today they were don't use for war, but the ivory is the reason for horrible poaching and worldwide black marked. In the 19. Century lives about 10 millon elephants in africa, today not more than a half million. To beware elephants for global extermination these species stands under protection of endangered species, so every dealing of elephant products is illegal, also ivory.

Please don't use elephant ivory - you support the illegal proaching. About 80% of worldwide avaible ivory is illegal. The rest of elephants were died also in this way.

As ivory processes fabulous sounded transmission properties and a wonderful feeling by playing middles, becomes very valuabley instruments these materials. A normal bridge of a "New Yorker" costes easyly 90,- €. So you stand there - what can you do?
However to use ivory, you can take it from a extinct species. Before little more than twoandhalf to three million years came the first mammoth to europe. Before 100.000 years they had adjusted with there coat the extreme environmental condition and than cames the big global atmospherik warming and the hole species died before 10.000 to 25.00 years. Many of these mammoths are preserved in the eternal ice and the tusks come in relative big quantities from Siberia and Canada. Sometimes pieces of tusks will be found in our countries. It is in process fundamental like elephant ivory. But it is distinct harder and brittler, because it has lieing longer in ice. That's the reason for splits and discoulor of material.

Mammoth ivory has follows properities:

I have bought a fragment of a tusk and show a picture during process of mammoth ivory.

The piece is a little bit longer than 30 cm and weights about 2 kg. It's a halftooth and would be seperated from a tusk and professional preserved. From the outside I could't estimate the inside, so I have rotary- grinded a piece with the Dremel. It's rather soft and smells strongly like burned hair. This piece was then cut on bandsaw in 3 mm wide stripes, on my beltsander sanded to equal thickness, polished and cutted to final form.

After testing the material was very usefull (it can be also strong crumbling and not polished). I cut the fragment and workerd on. With abrasiv paper, file and polishdisk you can make a supple piece for a guitar.

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Revision 08.06.2002