I live in cattle country, and have a few horses. I have tried hooves, raw bone, leather, etc; they will all work, …. Just some thoughts:
One of the issues with using raw products is the fats, oils and waxes that can cause havoc during CCH.
Hooves have a lot of crap in them…literally. Also imbedded grit, sand stones etc.
Burning raw materials will smoke and stink to high heaven. A smell that you will not likely enjoy nor forget so do it outside, downwind.
As I stated earlier, I talked with quite a few folks with lots of ideas/opinions: leather, horn, use only pig bone, urine, peach pits, …eye of newt etc. I could go on and on. Bottom line is that they were either clueless or were leading me on a wild goose chase.
In my humble opinion, the material needs to be well charred to remove any of the fats, oils, waxes etc, at that point the material is charred enough, and it becomes charcoal, and is basic carbon.
Again, I’ve been doing this for about 10 years, the conclusion that I have come to is that, you can get acceptable repeatable results with just bone & wood charcoal by varying the bone to wood ratio, quench temp, blocking and quench water temp.
