Happy holidays everybody!
I have these deer bones lying around here (the meat around the bones was our Christmas dinner...) and I was wondering whether I could turn them into nuts and/or bridges for guitars... Does anyone have any experience with deer bone? I'm sure lots of you Americans are hunters and have deer bones lying around all the time... I just wanted to know whether it's worth the effort to clean, saw and sand them. Is deer bone as sturdy as cow bone? And does it have the same tonal qualities?
Any experiences or advice greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Replies
You may want to do some googling on how bone is prepared for use as nuts and bridges. From what I've read, it's a fairly lengthy process to removed the moisture deep in the bone so that it performs well.
Do some checking and decide if you want to attack the prep.
I really started to like the idea of using those bones - all the more so because I'm building a wine box guitar and I could claim that I served the wine from the box with the venison (even though this is not really true...) - but then I read your reply, Tom,started googling and - oh well, I think I'll stick with the cheap bone blanks...
Here's what I found: http://www.bearmeadow.com/build/materials/bone/html/bone-clean.html (It was the sentence"talk to your local fire marshal about legal methods for white gas storage and disposal" that ultimately dissuaded me...)
Stewmac.com is where I've bought most of mine for my 6 stringers. You can get them slotted or in blank form.
Thanks so much for the great advice (and the joke, of course!). The idea with the ants sounds great, but that would be quite complicated here in the big city. And all the more so in the middle of winter - I don't think any ant would show their face before April or May here. But I achieved some pretty good initial cleaning results with first cooking the bones for a few hours (kill two birds with one stone: now I also have venison broth...) and then putting them in the dishwasher...
I bought a bone nut for one of my 6 string guitars a few years ago and was instantly hooked. All my 6 string guitars now have bone nuts or about to have bone nuts. They are the best for good tone in my opinion.
I've seen videos of people making them from dog bones bought at Petco and other stores. Do a search on Youtube for it.
My CBG's usually get a steel or brass bolt these days, they work well. You don't have cut any grooves in them, they last forever and they offer their own tonal properties as well.
Many will tell you it doesn't make a difference and to them it may not. Trying it once was enough for me.
Find an ant bed and let them clean the bones. Cheap labor. Used to do this when I made Indian style jewelry.
That's working easy. LOL Smart idea.
I've not used bone for for any of my builds (yet) but I'd say go for it. Deer bone might not be as dense as cow bone but it's got to be at least as dense as the wood a lot of people use for bridges so seems to me it would work fine.
Thanks, Korrigan. I've always used bone nuts so far because the big guitar parts online store here in Germany sells bone nut blanks for two bucks a piece. So I'm really wondering whether it's worth the considerable effort to turn these greasy bones into guitar parts with the hand tools I have... On the other hand it would be pretty cool to have a guitar with nut and bridge made from Christmas dinner leftovers... What I'm really afraid of is that the stuff splinters after many precious hours of trying to make it usable...
Well, if you can get blanks for $2, that's probably the way to go but I think using the deer bone would be worth it just for the coolness of being able to tell people...
"I made the nut and bridge from a deer bone. Hey, speaking of deer... A man kills a deer and takes it home to cook for dinner. Now because his children are very picky eaters and don't like venison, both he and his wife decide that they won't tell the kids what kind of meat it is. The kids, eager to know what the meat on their plates is, beg their dad for a clue. 'Well," he says, 'it's what mommy calls me sometimes'. The little girl screams to her brother, 'Don't eat it, it's an asshole!"
:D