Thread: Ivory vs Bone vs fake Ivory under Black light examples needed

Agreed....

Ok, time to 'fess up: its camel bone. I know this because I made them. Sorry for the trickery, I just wanted to make a point: looks can be deceptive. i'd never thought they looked like horn but I can see why others would. To touch them, or see them up close they look and feel like well handled antique ivory with none of the tell tale signs of bone. I like the black light idea, I'll be interested to see if it shows up the deception in these scales. Get those test photos on the go Willis! Sorry again for the deception folks, no insult intended. Ok Willis, you can have your thread back now me old mate

Sneaky

Here are some pix of ivory & one bone .......... you can see the divots in the bone against the ivory in the first two pix, the last pic if two ivories ;

The divots is the bone are called Haversion Canals,Since bone is living tissue it is were blood and nerve roots feed the bone.
Like Ivory they will flash purple light under U.V light.

Originally Posted by puketui41

Ok, time to 'fess up: its camel bone. I know this because I made them. Sorry for the trickery, I just wanted to make a point: looks can be deceptive. i'd never thought they looked like horn but I can see why others would. To touch them, or see them up close they look and feel like well handled antique ivory with none of the tell tale signs of bone. I like the black light idea, I'll be interested to see if it shows up the deception in these scales. Get those test photos on the go Willis! Sorry again for the deception folks, no insult intended. Ok Willis, you can have your thread back now me old mate

tricked me there. definitely does not look like ivory, but could have fooled me if you said it was horn. Nice polish on the scales though.

I found this thread very interesting so I thought that I'd post so I can hopefully see the black light results. I'm never too old to learn something new.

By the way those are really nice looking scales/I would never have guessed them to be camel bone!

No 'trickery' involved here! I would think the camel bone scales shown are heavily-oiled which changes the appearance. They appear to be yellowed, soft, and resembling translucent horn, while the collars and escutcheon give them away to have been recently-made or possibly restored.
I have several sets of old bone/ivory scales which have been over-oiled and the appearance is the same. Camel bone scales without oil have no such appearance. JMO
I do , however, like the result!

Dead on Tom! I finished them with 3000# wet and dry and then saturated them with grape seed oil in a vacuum chamber. They're about two or three years old now and over time they have yellowed more and more. The escutcheons (I just learnt a new word), one each side, I filed out of a brass key. I'll be interested to see the results of the black light idea if anyone has the equipment and time to post it. Sounds like it might be a good non-destructive way of determining material for those of us who struggle otherwise.

Regards,
Dave

Good thinking on the vacuum chamber. The one's I have which are over-oiled resulted from someone slathering the blade with too much oil and it soaking in, making splotches. I have not been able to get the oil out, nor making them uniform with more oil.
Someday I will rig up a vacuum chamber (lots of examples in the workshop) and give it a go. .
I recognize the cat's eye collars from Babur. He has sent me several different escutcheons with tiny pins as gifts on larger orders. His pins are great for many razors.
I just assumed it was from him as well. There are many, many threads here on identifying ivory, bone, etc with some great pictures/examples. All one must do is a forum search on the subject.