There was to the best of my memory a poster who advertised custom ivory/brass front sights. I searched but could not locate contact info. Anyone know who.

Thanks

I remember that as well. I think that was in the pre-ban period. I think selling anything made of ivory has become much more difficult since the ban. I'm glad I have a stash of small pieces I bought for personal projects when it was still possible.

All ivory was not banned. You can still buy, sell and trade other types of ivory other than elephant. A few states have banned some of the other types, too, such as mammoth.

https://www.boonetrading.com/collections/mammoth-ivory-bone

Stan

Mamoth Ivory is fossilized, I have not worked any but would think it is much harder than Elephant Ivory, the color is darker as well.

Has anyone worked with Mamoth ivory?

It is said, sometimes, to be fossilized, but it's really not, according to the Boone Trading Company website. There's a good explanation of that under their heading "Working With Ivory".

There is also walrus and narwhal ivory. Plus, there's always "Georgia Ivory" .......... wild boar tusk.

Stan

Hippo and Wharthog as well.

As I recall, Dale Edmonds of Kansas City was making them.

I believe Chris Dawe, a gunsmith in Newfoundland and a member here, has and occasionally uses mammoth ivory.

I have used mammoth tusk, it is like being at the dentist years ago.
Just a tooth frozen in ground for a long time
Hacksaw, file work easily, smell is unpleasant.

Keep the mammoth sedated.......

Someone on here several years go put up an ad for several old ivory bead sights for sale. I p.m.'ed him immediately and he said he would contact me as soon as he found them. Never heard anything else about them.

I saw a combination brass/ivory bead front sight for sale not so long ago, but can't remember if it was a reproduction with "artificial ivory" or the real thing.

I've made several ivory beads using mammoth tusk. Pretty simple to do & I like the results. My only dislike is the smell when your working it into a bead shape. I always wear a respirator when cutting, filing or sanding it.

Was it Dale Edmonds who had sights ? I could be wrong.

Dale is retired from refinishing barrels, but he still has his lathe, I know he has a supply of mammoth ivory beads, and has made beads in past.
Whether he could be persuaded to make some is another thing.

A fellow by the name of Russ made them in the St Louis area. He did a lot of unusual repair jobs and may have coined the term JABC. I believe he checked out several years ago.

bill

Fossilized walrus and mammoth is legal in the US.
Raw walrus Ivory is legal in the US if its done by an Alaskan native.
There are states that have laws against fossilized ivory. One of those being NY.
Fossilized walrus and mammoth ivory is very easy to come up with around here. I have made a few ivory beads for my own guns on my wood lathe. Its not easy to do to make them look right and not something I want to do for others.

There is a "de minimus" regulation of the USFWS that allows interstate commerce in elephant ivory if it entered the country prior to 1990, not sport harvested, and if it is less than 200 gm. in weight.

I Inherited from an ancestor who was employed as a piano builder in Chicago circa 1900 several ivory key tops never installed on a keyboard. If anybody needs any, we probably could come to an understanding.

Each piece is about as thick as a dime, so yes, they are wafer thin, probably perfect for artistic inlay. But if a fellow could glue a few atop eachother, you could probably approximate any original sight bead or profile you wanted.

I have a set of piano ivories that I "harvested" from a piano my mother was having renovated, many years ago. They have remained unused for over 40 years, due to the thinness of the pieces. Aside from decorative inlays on m/l rifles I haven't found a use for them yet. But, maybe someday ................


Again, it's not truly fossilized. It's only in the first stages of fossilization. A more accurate term for it is "mineralized". A true fossil is like rock. Mammoth ivory can be worked just like currently harvested ivory. But, it usually has streaking and colors from the beginnings of the mineralization processes.


Stan

I bought a bag of ivory scraps years ago off eBay just before they banned selling the stuff. Odd shapes and various thicknesses. Have made a few sight for personal use but by the time I was done I stank like burned hair and if paid would have made about three bucks a day. Might try looking for cheap ivory carving made for the tourist trade. You see them in antique shops and flea markets. One several inches long would last a lifetime for beads. Real ivory stinks like burnt hair if you put a red hot metal pin on it. Cast epoxy does not, it smells sweeter to me.

Russ Ruppel. He was a fount of knowledge and wisdom. Truly one of a kind. He’s been gone quite a few years.

I miss Russ. He was a one of a kind and a font of knowledge.

And before one of our resident grammarians calls either Remington 40x or me on it, when referring to someone as a source of knowledge or wisdom, both "fount" and "font" are correct.

I don't correct grammar, but I wondered when I saw that...Geo

Weren't old billiard ball made from ivory? Janeck solved the bead problem by going with gold and I would guess others did also.

The last ivory billiard balls were produced in the early 1970's. And even by then, the vast majority were made from acrylic resins. Manufacturers began getting away from ivory balls in the late 19th century, when the demand for billiard balls was already putting extreme pressure on Asian and African elephant populations. It took two to three average tusks to make one set of ivory billiard balls. They turned to materials like ox bones, nitrocellulose, bakelite, polyester, and phenolic resins.

I've heard the nitrocellulose balls were somewhat unstable, and could actually explode upon impact. That would add some excitement to the game. Of course, nitrocellulose is also known as gun cotton, one of the components of double base smokeless gun powder.

In addition to walrus ivory, mammoth ivory, whale ivory, warthog, ivory, etc. there is still a lot of old elephant ivory on the market, in spite of trading and sales bans. It was used for all manner of items such as ornaments, jewelry, utensil handles, pistol grips, statuettes, chess pieces, etc. Ivory items frequently turn up at Flea Markets, antique shops, local auctions, Pawn Shops, etc. There should be no need for the foreseeable future to resort to gluing up thin strips of piano keys to fabricate something as small as a shotgun bead. The problem lies in the legality of selling that gun in the future, and the risk that some government entity might confiscate your gun because it has an ivory bead. Right now, that risk is small unless you sell across certain state lines. But with anti-gun environmentalist wacko Democrats in power, that could change as quickly as Altzheimer Joe Biden's latest anti-gun executive orders.

Thanks. My Canadian father in law Col. Denison brought back an ivory cribbage board after being a Japanese POW for 3 1/2 years when Hong Kong fell. The board had full 3D carvings of dragons, phoenixes, etc. on all four edges. Likely elephant, as the board slowly warped a bit into a tusk-like arc.