BS: plant ivory-

Subject: BS: plant ivory-
From: beardedbruce
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 05:50 AM

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/26/vegivory/index.html

I know BillD has some, but is anyone else using it? Can we get guitar pins made of it, or bridge saddles or nuts? ( the kind on the neck of instruments)

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 05:55 AM

It's been used to produce jewelry and for teaching the old art of schrimshaw for years. Very tough and buffs to a lovely finish.

Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 07:03 AM

Googling "tagua+guitar" yields numerous hits, but it looks like most luthiers use it as an inlay medium, not for making hardware like nuts and saddles. One luthier (DeTemple) does use it to make string trees (the little piece that holds down the B and high E strings on Strat & Tele style electric guitars).

Maybe it doesn't come in large enough chunks to use for saddles and nuts?

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 07:09 AM

ivory nuts? Should this be linked to the left nut thread?

There are commercially available resins that act just like ivory, but I've lost my only contact which was in Cardiff.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Pied Piper
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 08:09 AM

Widening out this discussion a bit there are plenty of native UK and US woods which can be used to make stringed instruments.
My own interest is in using Elder (sambucus nigra) to make wind instruments. It actually resembles bone when polished and can have a specific gravity of 0.8 (water =1). I treat it with beeswax which makes it's SG above 1 and prevents rapid dimensional change when exposed to breath moisture.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 09:15 AM

Well, I dunno. An ivory saddle sounds like it would be uncomfortable and probably would chafe the horse pretty badly.

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 12:35 PM

A Tagua nut the size of a medium lemon is pretty large...most that I get are a bit smaller. It is perfectly possible to get some pieces the size of Guitar saddles or nut...or tuning pegs...out of some. The limiting factor is the angle and shape of the hollow place in the center where the nut's growth occurs if they aren't harvested and dried.

Here's what I do with them the tallest is about 1½ inches.

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 12:47 PM

Those are gorgeous, Bill D. Did you have any on display at the Getaway last year? Will you be bringing some this year? Is Tagua raw material extremely expensive?

And Rapaire, I agree that ivory saddles would probably be uncomfortable for the horse but surely its looks would offset that? *G*

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 01:14 PM

I think I had several, Ebbie...I usually have a few around. No, they are not expensive..(well, not BEFORE CNN publicized them..*grin*)

I get them for something like a dollar a piece in larger orders, (more for special orders of larger sizes, but I don't usually need huge ones. There is occasional loss when I guess the angle wrong and ruin one, and I've found a couple of rotten/flawed ones.

Rita does pyrography (animals, flowers, etc.)on slices of them and I drill holes to make them into necklaces. (We don't do the slicing/polishing...that is done by the communities who gather & process them.)

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 01:37 PM

I'll be looking for them at Getaway 2005, Bill. (By the way, I first read your sentence this way: "Rita does pornography...") LOL

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 01:47 PM

tsk, Ebbie...you see what you want to see..*grin*...(ok, I'll plan to have a few)

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 04:07 PM

I like wood a lot, Bill. So if I did see the plant ivory pieces, I may thought of them as plastic. I'm not a particularly discerning person. :)

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Pied Piper
Date: 28 Apr 05 - 03:14 PM

This looks like lovely stuff and nice work.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Apr 05 - 03:29 PM

(they ARE small, Ebbie..*grin*....and I don't have a particularly discerning memory...maybe I didn't put them out since they could 'disappear' so easily)...ah, well..

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 28 Apr 05 - 07:34 PM

Damn, I thought this was for gardeners wishing to grow their own elephants.

DT

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Pied Piper
Date: 29 Apr 05 - 07:41 AM

What a refreshingly gentle thread after battling (in vain) with Martin.

Do you think we're safe here?

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Ferrara
Date: 29 Apr 05 - 04:27 PM

Ebbie, you can see two examples of my designs burned on tagua slices (one of holly, one of a wolf) at our (still unfinished) website
and an enlargement of the wolf piece at this address. The wolf about one and 1/8 inches wide and 1 and 3/4 inches tall, including the dark rim which is the outside coating of the nut.

The holly was painted with acrylics, the wolf was colored with oil pencils. Both have a coat of Deft lacquer.

Tagua is harder to burn than wood but you can get really crisp detail. I like to carve the details into the nut with the burning pen. They have a beautiful shimmer when they're done.

At craft shows I have a small sign that explains about tagua and where it comes from, and I keep some unburned slices and a whole tagua nut or two. Once in a while I end up giving away my samples to someone, for example a schoolteacher who is teaching a unit on Central America and wants to show them to the kids. Also once in a while someone comes up to the booth to tell us about how they had taguas in their homeland. One woman (from Ecuador? Guatemala? I don't remember and my understanding of the geographical distributions of tagua is pretty scant) said that as a kid she had doll furniture carved out of taguas.

Subject: RE: BS: plant ivory-
From: Ferrara
Date: 29 Apr 05 - 04:44 PM

The tagua that I use is imported from Central American countries by a group called OneWorld Projects. They are quite wonderful IMO because they have worked hard to turn the harvesting and marketing of tagua into a sustainable rainforest based industry. They market other third world products made from renewable materials as well.

You can see their web site here at One World Projects. It shows a lot of products made from tagua and also has a few photos of the nuts. Since I last looked at it though they have taken down some of the great photos in favor of more sales information. Sigh...

The taguas grow in huge aggregations of pods, roughly spherical and about the size of a beach ball. They're called cabezas (heads, in Spanish, I believe.) Each cabeza is made up of many pods; each pod has 5 or 6 taguas in it.

When they are new they are edible, the inside is a kind of gel. I've seen photos of huge piles of edible taguas in the marketplace. They get very hard as they dry. Some get brownish but most of them turn a lovely ivory color or stay fairly white.

Well this is probably more than anyone wants to know about it, huh?