Mystery Knife Game

[GringoBombero]

I'm not seeing the striations that I usually see in imitation ivory. I wonder if "buffalo ivory" is bone?
Not at all an expert, just thinking out loud.

Also, not Parker, not Buck

[bestgear]

Still looks like natural ivory

100% agree Lyle - love to see a 112+ year old knife still making new stories - pretty cool if you ask me

[wlf]

Still looks like natural ivory

100% agree Lyle - love to see a 112+ year old knife still making new stories - pretty cool if you ask me

Thanks for sharing your expertise on the subjects .

Schrade gringo

[bestgear]

I wonder if "buffalo ivory" is bone

I have more than a few H&B knives in my collection and when cataloging them my working hypothesis is that buffalo ivoroy is polished buffalo horn since the catalog cuts I have for those models are all lightly shaded indicating not a dark colored knife. What I’m not sure is if Ivory and Buffalo Ivory come from the same animal and are the same just called something different in the catalogs I have. A mystery within the mystery game

[GringoBombero]

Interesting. I figured horn would also have the lines in it.

Not schrade

[Ridgegrass]

Ivory/Horn/Bone: My 2 cents' worth.
-That knife looks like ivory. I can see the natural striations on the left side on the ruler pic. Ivory is tooth material, without blood supply in the dentine.
-Horn, viewed close up, has tiny lines because it is keratinaceous protein fiber bundles, like hair, nails, and claws. It is dead tissue, no blood supply.
-Bone is hydroxyapetite, a crystalline mineral salt of calcium and phosphate. Because it is living, growing tissue that can heal itself, it has tiny blood
capillaries to support it's active cells and these appear as tiny, hair-like flecks in the bone handles of knives.
It's interesting, if your have knives of all three types, to compare and examine them with a loupe or microscope. The differences are very obvious.
I have seen smooth, white bone that has been bleached and the blood capillaries are very hard to see. In this case, small pieces can look like ivory.
J.O'.

[bestgear]

JO - what would you say Buffalo Ivoroy is, Buffalo teeth?

Not that far fetched since Native Americans used them for necklaces and jewelry.

Just seems like an odd description from H&B. I’m learning a lot from this dialogue. I’m happy to fail my hypothesis and form a new one

[GringoBombero]

Thanks JO, that is the educated way of explaining what I was thinking.
We have all seen the striations in faux ivory, but if this material was from Buffalo horn, you would also see striations because it is made from Keratin (same cells as hair and nails)

I don't think he's implying that it is from just regular teeth, but true ivory is made from tusks which are solid because they're essentially elongated teeth.

But I've been wrong before.

[GringoBombero]

I have quite a few straight razors with those lines and assumed they were faux ivory, until I learned that many of them are Buffalo horn which has similar lines.

[bestgear]

Thanks JO, that is the educated way of explaining what I was thinking.
We have all seen the striations in faux ivory, but if this material was from Buffalo horn, you would also see striations because it is made from Keratin (same cells as hair and nails)

I don't think he's implying that it is from just regular teeth, but true ivory is made from tusks which are solid because they're essentially elongated teeth.

But I've been wrong before.

I get that ….. but American Buffalo (bison) and African Water Buffalo don’t have tusks …..so if it’s ivory from tusks why would you imagine H&B would use the term “Buffalo Ivoroy”?

Is there another Buffalo species that has tusks? Deep convo for sure. Sorry to be such a detail hound.

Or was H&B being politically correct at a time that American Buffalos were still being slaughtered. Between 1872 and 1873 over three million buffalo were killed and 30 years later H&B was gone.

[GringoBombero]

My completely unfounded WAG is that perhaps they were using a dense and less porous section of Buffalo bone...

[bestgear]

My completely unfounded WAG is that perhaps they were using a dense and less porous section of Buffalo bone...

that would make practical sense for sure - so polished bone from a Buffalo but sell it as ivory, I guess I could consider that as a possibility sorry to hijack the thread

[GringoBombero]

No worries.

Also, I'm only guessing that might be the case rather than actual teeth simply due to the amount of workable material one might be able to salvage from a tooth. But I have no idea how big buffalo teeth are

[Ridgegrass]

Don't know much about buffalo teeth, but as an herbivore like deer, a bison's teeth aren't huge, not tusks for sure, flat nippers in front, molars in back.
Maybe big enough for a gent's knife?.
Here are 4 pics:
1) Nice, clear cattle shin bone on a Catt., supposedly the densest and you can see that it's clear except for a couple blood capillaries near the pin.
2) Genuine elephant ivory. No striations, pure white, on a re-handled Golden Rule knife.
3) Cattle horn. Those are not striations. They are actual keratin fiber bundles.
4) "French Ivory", celluloid. Schrade Cut. Co.

[GringoBombero]

Very nice visual aide. Thank you!

[glennbad]

Kershaw?

[Ridgegrass]

Frost O'.

[GringoBombero]

No sirs

[bestgear]

Ambassador

[GringoBombero]

Negative

Eastern outfit

[Ridgegrass]

Boker O'.

[GringoBombero]

No sir

[GringoBombero]

Refresher

[wlf]

It's always been easy to tell the difference between real and French ivory.
I would think ivoroy whatever name or shade was still man made, but that's just an opinion.

The natural materials as John showed are easily identified with close examination.

[GringoBombero]

Ah yes, that is true. An obvious possibility that I somehow never even considered; a completely different type of synthetic material, other than standard "French Ivory" hence, no lines... and the unique name. Interesting.

If you mentioned that before I either misunderstood or just missed it entirely.