Bone

**Peter LaMorte** · Jul-01-2010, 10:28pm

I'm looking for some bone to make a few nuts. I'd like some 5/16 x 3/8 x 2 1/2". I been looking, but not finding much. Does anyone know of a source where I can buy in bulk, rough stock ????
Thanks
Peter

**bigbike** · Jul-01-2010, 10:48pm

There is/was a guy on ebay that sold like 10 pieces of bone in the size you describe for around $10 plus $3 for shipping. Haven't been on ebay in a while so I don't know if he is still there or not.

**Paul Hostetter** · Jul-01-2010, 11:33pm

You can make them rather easily, especially if you have access to a bandsaw and a 6x48 belt sander, and can lay hands on some big thigh bones. Bone works easily. Put the dust in your garden. Most commercial bone comes from Taiwan, and the original animal sources are more varied than you might imagine.

However, I just take bones from the market and boil them into a stock—no bleach, no chemicals, no soap, nothing extreme—just boil them clean, dry them and cut them up and use them. The size you seek is not available commercially. The biggest is 3-1/4" x 5/32" x 1/4".

If you want some really big bone, there are folks on eBay selling giraffe bones. They are huge!

**sunburst** · Jul-01-2010, 11:39pm

I get most of mine from the pet store. They sell them for dogs to chew, and I look through them and if I find a thick, dense looking bone I grab it and throw it in a drawer for later use. They use hydrogen peroxide to "bleach" them and the good ones are hard and dense and work well for nuts and saddles. (If they're bleached with chlorine they start to get like chalk.)
Paul, that looks like a dinosaur bone!

**Paul Hostetter** · Jul-01-2010, 11:55pm

Giraffes are almost dinosaurs!

**Peter LaMorte** · Jul-02-2010, 8:33am

As Always great information, I'm off to the butchers and the pet store.
Thanks so much

**Willie** · Jul-02-2010, 10:40am

Paul, doesn`t boiling the bones make them somewhat soft? A luthier friend of mine gets bones from a butcher and throws them out in his back yard and lets the birds pick them clean and then he scrapes them a bit and uses those for making nuts and saddles for guitars...

Willie

**Paul Hostetter** · Jul-02-2010, 6:26pm

Originally Posted by Willie

Paul, doesn't boiling the bones make them somewhat soft?

Not at all. Bleach will, as John already mentioned, make them break down and become chalky, starting from the outside and working in. Cooking them simply cleans the bits off, degreases them, and gets the marrow out, etc.

A luthier friend of mine gets bones from a butcher and throws them out in his back yard and lets the birds pick them clean and then he scrapes them a bit and uses those for making nuts and saddles for guitars...

I've done that (actually, it was harvested and brought indoors after my dog had cleaned them off) but a) they remain a bit greasy, which is not a huge deal but not greasy is better, and b) if you leave them out long enough to really stop being greasy, the bone is often cracked and kind of wasted by the elements. Boiling them for stock (whether you keep it or not) is simple and more effective.

**David Newton** · Jul-03-2010, 9:18am

My wife generally waves me off with the flyswatter if I come in the kitchen with guitar stuff, so cut your bones into usable chunks and toss the unusable parts before boiling. Much less boiling time too.

Pet store bones are pretty much ready to use, if they say "cleaned" or "boiled".

**theonly1hardway** · Jul-08-2010, 3:55pm

There was a post on the banjo hangout about how to process bone wrote up by a fellow who worked in a museum. Boiling the bone does not get all the grease out of the bone which can effect the wood and finish eventually, the last thing to do was soak them in white gas or Coleman lantern fuel for about 6 weeks this removes all the grease, and then the peroxide, to whiten to taste. I don't know first hand about the residule grease but seems to make since since you boil them to get the grease out but your boiling them in greasy water.

**bobbyburns** · Jul-08-2010, 5:11pm

I second the pet store idea. I used to get them at a slaughter house and boil them and set them out in the sun for days. After I heard about the pet store idea, thats where most of my bone has come from for years. I have noticed a lot of the nut blanks I used to buy would leave a bleach residue on my hands, sometimes it smelled like they cleaned them in gasoline. The pet store bone is way cleaner, and you know there is nothing poison in it. After all, they don't want it to kill your dog. They don't fall apart like bleached ones sometimes will, and they haven't been filled with plaster and polished ( I hate it when you see someone who wants you to fit a saddle with their special material they paid a lot for, and its all nice and shiny, and then I have to cut and sand all the shiny off).
It's a whole lot less nasty work than cutting up the fresh raw bones, and they are cheap.

**Paul Hostetter** · Jul-08-2010, 6:18pm

Originally Posted by theonly1hardway

There was a post on the banjo hangout about how to process bone wrote up by a fellow who worked in a museum. Boiling the bone does not get all the grease out of the bone which can effect the wood and finish eventually, the last thing to do was soak them in white gas or Coleman lantern fuel for about 6 weeks this removes all the grease, and then the peroxide, to whiten to taste. I don't know first hand about the residule grease but seems to make since since you boil them to get the grease out but your boiling them in greasy water.

Ouf. Trust me, I've been at this a very long time (and I have worked as a conservator in museums as well). Simply boiling the bones gets them plenty clean enough for use as nuts. I would never soak them in a solvent like white gas—you have to work with this stuff afterwards. Whitening them with peroxide is, or should be, unnecessary.

Bleached bones aren't treated with plaster, but the outer surface is so degraded from the bleaching that it can come off sometimes as white dust.

Finally, cutting and dressing bone is really not that bad. It's quite kind to abrasives, and if you have good air exchange, you don't have to suffer the, um, fragrance too long.

BTW, I have found the Chrislin (Stew-Mac) saddles to be of low quality. I get my saddle blanks from Saga, which sources them direct from someone else in Taiwan, and the quality is much higher. They stay flat, the edges are true. I only make nuts from raw bone.

**Lee Callicutt** · Jul-08-2010, 7:59pm

I once made a saddle for a classical guitar from a dog bone that had been "beef flavored," whatever that means, but it made for a slightly "older" looking saddle with rich, amber striations. Really rich looking. Any idea if the flavoring would have any structural drawbacks?

**Tavy** · Jul-09-2010, 2:46am

Originally Posted by Lee Callicutt

I once made a saddle for a classical guitar from a dog bone that had been "beef flavored," whatever that means, but it made for a slightly "older" looking saddle with rich, amber striations. Really rich looking. Any idea if the flavoring would have any structural drawbacks?

Beefier tone maybe? Sorry couldn't resist

**Lee Callicutt** · Jul-09-2010, 9:12am

It's BACON!!!!!!

**Rick Turner** · Jul-09-2010, 7:26pm

I'm another fan of the Saga bone for both nuts and saddles. Once you get past their first minimum purchase, you can buy small quantities and their service is really good other than when parts are back ordered, but that's just how it is when a company tries to purchase on a "JIT" (Just In Time) basis which does help keep their prices very low. To me it's cheaper to buy these parts from Saga than to make from pet shop dog bone unless I need special sizes.

Also, bleached out bone is just plain boring. I like a bit of color in there.

**George Roberts** · Jul-10-2010, 8:55pm

Another concern with freshly boiled bone is that it may shrink. The shrinkage is minimal, perhaps 0.010 per inch. This would seem to be counter-intuitive. What could be more stable than bone? But, like wood, there is shrinkage, and like wood, it tends to be more pronounced early, with more stability later. If you look at old bone handled knives, it is quite noticeable. If you boil your own bones, let them "age" a while afterward.
George

**Paul Hostetter** · Jul-11-2010, 1:16pm

Another concern with freshly boiled bone is that it may shrink. The shrinkage is minimal, perhaps 0.010 per inch. This would seem to be counter-intuitive. What could be more stable than bone? But, like wood, there is shrinkage, and like wood, it tends to be more pronounced early, with more stability later. If you look at old bone handled knives, it is quite noticeable. If you boil your own bones, let them "age" a while afterward.

Not bad advice in the final analysis, but a) my intuition tells me that most allegedly shrunken bone knife handles have had upwards of 75 years of either being carried in pockets or being washed and dried often as tableware, and b) my experience (more than 40 years ongoing) tells me that shrinkage is simply a non-event in the instrument world. To think that Gibson, for example, or Lyon and Healy or Harmony, et al, which only ever used bone, made a point of aging bone or doing any meticulous preparation is incomprehensible. How many thousands of old bone nuts? Shrinkage? I don't think so.

**Rick Turner** · Jul-11-2010, 2:00pm

My nuts haven't shrunken with age...

Sorry, couldn't resist...

**bmac** · Jul-11-2010, 3:48pm

"My nuts haven't shrunken with age...

Sorry, couldn't resist... "

Why does that make you sorry??? You should be happy.

**George Roberts** · Jul-11-2010, 8:34pm

Having made a couple reproductions of 18th and 19th century knives using freshly boiled beef thigh bone, I can attest first hand to the shrinkage involved. This does not require a double blinded study, and could easily be confirmed by boiling the bone, cutting it to size, and measuring it with a micrometer. Rechecking it 3 to 4 weeks later should show significant shrinkage. By "aging" I am not suggesting years, but at least several weeks.
I suspect that Gibson, Martin, and Lyon and Healey probably never had stores of bone that weren't several months or more old before it was used.
George