ivoroid nut

[reverb41]

thinking about replacing the ebony nut on a blonde F5 mandolin which has off-white binding....thought it would look sweet to use ivoroid for the nut which will match the tuner buttons and binding nicely.

just wondering how this will effect the tone and if anyone has tried it? cheers.....

[ShaneJ]

I think it'd be too soft.

[Bill Snyder]

Would real bone not match closely or is it bleached too white? If not bone some of the man made products like Corian come in several shades of off-white.
If you decide to use Corian a good source for free material may be a shop that installs Corian counter tops. They should have scraps of various sizes that would otherwise be thrown away.
There are several choices for nuts at Stewart MacDonald. (http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Nuts,_saddles/String_nuts/String_Nuts.html)

[reverb41]

ya my other two choices are unbleached bone or micarta....thanks for the tip on corian. i love the idea of recycling scrap materials.....

[krishna]

Revrb, don't use any thing else. Go get some bone. Micarta, and Corian are ,how do I put this... ####. You'll be doing yourself a favor. And iveroid IS WAY to soft....Kerry

[Fretbear]

Bone is not the only choice for nuts. I very successfully use a radiused Graph-tech "Trem-Nut "guitar nut from Stew-mac which is a graphite-based composite material which imparts an extremely mellow tone to the open strings, presents zero string binding/tuning issues, wears well and in addition, looks very cool on "Blackie",,,,,

[grandmainger]

There some fossilised walrus ivory nut material in this advert (http://www.mandolincafe.com/cgi-bin/classifieds/classifieds.cgi?search_and_display_db_button=on&db_id=10965&query=retrieval) in the café classifieds.

[krishna]

Frettbear, I've tried them all. There are probs with all of them.The main prob is chipping and wear.I don't have any idea how Martin got it into their acoustic heads to start useing macarta. It seemed like a pretty bogus idea just to save some money and work. But when they started, they opened the floodgates! (My little exageration).Anyway,what exactally IS the reason they (Any of us) don't use bone? (the obvious answer is they want to have some different properties and to save some dough. In my (bloated and selfimportant) opinion, bone #and ivory,if you can get it, has been the best for saddles(guitar) and nuts for most string instruments....Kerry... There, I said it. Have now I opened the floodgates to arguments?... "Please don't shoot! I've a wife and three children!"( I love CBC television.) Canada Dry anyone?

[ShaneJ]

I just made a nut from a piece of deer antler to replace a cheap plastic one. It sounds very good. I used a piece of a tip of an antler. The inside of antlers, like bone, is a little porous. The outer 1/8" - 3/16" is very dense and hard. With careful planning, I was able to grind and cut away the interior and leave the hard part to be notched for the strings. At one point, I tried to cut it on my scroll saw, and it rounded off the points of the blade. I had to grind it down on the grinder. It, like bone, stinks pretty bad on the grinder. It polished up nice when I was done.