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.
