Brent, I have worked hippo ivory and it is as hard as woodpecker lips. In addition, the freshly-cut hippo ivory has a corpse-like pallor that's very unsightly, to me at least. This pallor seems to mitigate somewhat with the passage of time but in my limited experience it will never approach the beauty of elephant ivory. It will, however, crack like elephant ivory if allowed to dry out. Hippo and warthog ivory to me seem very similar to one another and supposedly they both make excellent front sight beads since they don't yellow like elephant ivory. I also have some warthog ivory but have never worked any of it. Yet.
Regards, Joe
