Thread: Where do you buy IVORY

There's also hippo ivory and elk have ivory in their rear molars. Every now and then in S Africa they cull the heards and that ivory is legal in some countries but its very expensive and the paperwork is massive.

This is a very helpful link that talks about working with pre ban ivory
Society of American Silversmiths - Working With Ivory

I really enjoy vintage razors that have Ivory scales. I just wish the scales were thicker. When I bought my first ivory scaled razor, I was amazed at how thin the scales were.

Here is one source for as much as you need. I will post another in seconds that has many types of ivory.

Ed
quicknicker

http://www.elephantivorytusks.com/index.html

Here's the other one. Great people to deal with. I got some narwhal ivory that I used in one of the pipes I made.
Have fun looking through their site, and good luck with the scales.
Oh, I noticed in one of the posts that ivory cue balls were mentioned. My wife bought me one for my birthday to make a shaving brush handle!

Ed
quicknicker

If you do find an old razor to swipe the scales off, be really careful with them. I have a pair of razors with ivory scales that I stripped down to clean and man, are those scales thin..! I spent the whole time working on them with my heart in my mouth hoping to God I wouldnt wreck them.

I've bought pieces of ivory recently from custom billiard cue makers for great prices. You can try some of the forums, they're are often large pieces or entire tusks for sale in the classified section. Try here:
www.azbilliards.com/forums

There are a number of dealers in the USA that sell pre-ban Ivory,but there are also a few cue making supply houses that also sell ivory slabs which could be used for scales.

I always find it interesting how there is so much preban ivory just "floating" around out there. The stuff was band in the 1970s and narwhale in the 60s. I can see old piano keys and cue balls but tusks and all I wonder where most of this stuff really comes from. Smuggling is a real problem I can tell you that. I have a shaving brush with an Elephant Ivory handle and they guy who made it documented his efforts to source the stuff and document it was really preban. He was up in Canada and it took him months to locate some and he tried both in Canada and here.

Narwhal is hunted near Greenland as a sustainable fishery. Thousands are taken each year. The tusks can be seen on display for sale in Canada at various places. They are pricey, but nothing compared to the fines and jail time you will spend if you are caught bringing one into the U.S..
As for the elephant ivory- since the ban thousands of tons of poacher taken ivory have been warehoused in Africa. Last year, or the one before, Africa decided to auction off the bulk of this ivory-no kidding. The sale, or the bulk of it, went to one of the Asian countries.
This info, and the rationale behind it, are google searchable.

Ed
quicknicker