Amber Stag sources

Ok so dyeing my own is the next best option I guess.

I just thought there might be more suppliers out there.
 
Ebay/Fiebings.


There was a guy selling nice tapers a while back whose name was RootsOfOhio. I think he sold out his stock, at least what he was willing to let go. But he was very expensive. There is another guy selling now who has very good prices. He goes by the name Origindia09. If the color isn't right you will have to dye it.
 
OrigIndia is the nice Indian couple that used to bring Rubbermaid bins FULL of good quality stag carvers to Blade which we all rummaged through during setup time on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. In the days when the stuff was readily available, they were the best deal to be found, but you sometimes had to clean the stuff up a little. I have bought a couple of pieces from the Roots guy and he does have very nice product, Yes, it is pricey, but good stuff like that has been pricey everywhere since like 2010. Imagine my shock when I went from getting stuff for $25-35 a pop from OrigIndia that just needed to be cleaned up a little in some cases and dyed to paying $75-95 per piece the following year from Jantz!!!! And Jantz was about the only place the had what I needed. Good stag scales from Roots cost what I paid Don Hanson for small blue and green mammoth scales years ago or more. As for mammoth, well a REALLY nice big pair of scales in those rare colors costs almost what I paid for my first car. :eek::D
i4Marc said:
Ebay/Fiebings.


There was a guy selling nice tapers a while back whose name was RootsOfOhio. I think he sold out his stock, at least what he was willing to let go. But he was very expensive. There is another guy selling now who has very good prices. He goes by the name Origindia09. If the color isn't right you will have to dye it.
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Rootes still has some stuff on ebay(not amber), but it's even pricier. I bought a lot of material from him, and it's primo stuff, but it's not like some of the old stuff, as far as stability. Some of the old stuff was denser and hard as a rock, this stuff will move on you some, especially if your winters are as dry as mine. I'd let it acclimate a while.


I'm not personally aware of any combination of Feibings that'll give you the same color of amber dying, and Culpepper is afaik the only game in town for that. They will dye your stag if you send it in. I've got a big batch of scales that I'll be having done soon. I haven't seen any natural amber in years, although I've seen some described as such, I wouldn't agree.


I'm semi-local to Culpepper, and there's definitely still good stuff available there, but I'd buy it while you can. Their supply is nearly exhausted also. I highly recommend, if stag is something you want to use, invest now. If you want amber, head to Blade, or one of the other shows Culpepper attends, with a pocket full of cash and select what works for you.

IMO, stag should only be purchased online once you know very well what shapes work for you, and you have a trusted source you can have select it. The difference between getting stag thin and paired with good texture, vs having a chubby clunker with all the personality ground away, is a fine margin. Great stag can't be beat, junk stag weakens the market for all of us, and personally I think that's why stag is so polarizing as a handle material. It is by far one of the trickiest materials to fit correctly. It has to be worked from the back as far as possible, with a keen understanding of the three dimensional nature. Figuring out what basic shape (curvature) works for your knives (especially when I assume we're talking about slipjoints here) is paramount. You've got an arch across the width, then flat, saddle, or swelled across the length, then variations in texture geography. Fitting wood and man made materials is child's play, by comparison.
 
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I'm thinking I might stay away from it...
Been researching it all day and a lot of the people are saying they have to buy six pair to get two decent scales.
They ship one good and one iffy...
I don't have the time or money to play games with material.
The taxidermy world was close to the same...
The main supplier bought out the smaller guys and raised prices on everything.
I had to find the mom and pop stuff for the good stuff.

I'll move on to something else for the time being...
Thanks all
 
Well in this case Manny, the Indian government banned exportation of this material in 2006. It's still legal to import, and there are no legal caveats to using it, but since India is the only real supplier of this material, the supply has dwindled to near nothing, with no sign of that changing anytime soon.

As I mentioned, if you learn what you're doing, it's easy to find good material from Culpepper at the shows, and their prices are still quite fair. I can easily find a dozen sets any time I go by there, that meet my very strict criteria for shape and texture. It's just that everybody has different expectations, and makes knives different. How much radius/arc to your scales/bolster for instance are a huge factor, some people prefer saddles so they can cut them to the bolster flush on the raised ends, but some people want them to be flat across the length or with a slight swell. It's impossible for a large supplier like culpepper to take enough photos for the prices they ask, for you to be able to evaluate all these caveats. If you know exactly what you like, and call them, they can usually find something acceptable however. The problem is, until you work with the material some, it's impossible to know what you need. It's better to get started now while there's some reasonable priced material available however, unless you plan to just write it off permanently.

There are other options also, if you're interested, feel free to PM me. As I said, I'm about to have some good stag dyed. I don't want to get in trouble however for saying any more in this area of the forum.
 
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My understanding is that the flood of really nice material at fair prices that we saw say 2008-2010 was stuff that had already been "harvested" at the time of the ban and released by the Indian government for sale later. The reason for the ban was legit in my opinion, but really didn't gave anything to do with direct threats to the sambar deer population as pretty much all of the antlers we get are "sheds" You can tell that with a number of pieces because they clearly appear to have been lying on the ground of a couple of seasons. I have only had one piece that still had any velvet scraps on it and that may have been because is was the most popcorn piece that I ever bought an the scraps were very dried out and way down in the crevasses. From what I was told, the problem was that the guys who go out and pick up the sheds got greedy and lazy and didn't want to stomp around in tall grass looking for the antlers so they started sets fire to fields and such to burn down the grass so they could pick up their booty. .
javand said:
Well in this case Manny, the Indian government banned exportation of this material in 2006. It's still legal to import, and there are no legal caveats to using it, but since India is the only real supplier of this material, the supply has dwindled to near nothing, with no sign of that changing anytime soon.

As I mentioned, if you learn what you're doing, it's easy to find good material from Culpepper at the shows, and their prices are still quite fair. There are other options also, if you're interested, feel free to PM me. As I said, I'm about to have some good stag dyed. I don't want to get in trouble however for saying any more in this area of the forum.
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You only have to use one color of Fiebings and it can be anything in the yellow to dark brown range. Same deal with wood like maple. I settled on light brown and fee years back. The more you apply, the darker it gets. That bowie is posted is a piece from OrigIndia done with light born. The limitation with coloring stag is oft times a result of the density of the piece as much as the coloring method. With that said, the density probably has more of an impact on the dying process than the prices that Culpepper uses. But I have had amber pieces that did not hols the same color as you ground into them. The dye only penetrated to a certain depth and that was it. In the case of Fiebings, I do the final coloring AFTER it has been ground to final dimensions.
javand said:
Rootes still has some stuff on ebay(not amber), but it's even pricier. I bought a lot of material from him, and it's primo stuff, but it's not like some of the old stuff, as far as stability. Some of the old stuff was denser and hard as a rock, this stuff will move on you some, especially if your winters are as dry as mine. I'd let it acclimate a while.


I'm not personally aware of any combination of Feibings that'll give you the same color of amber dying, and Culpepper is afaik the only game in town for that. They will dye your stag if you send it in. I've got a big batch of scales that I'll be having done soon. I haven't seen any natural amber in years, although I've seen some described as such, I wouldn't agree.


I'm semi-local to Culpepper, and there's definitely still good stuff available there, but I'd buy it while you can. Their supply is nearly exhausted also. I highly recommend, if stag is something you want to use, invest now. If you want amber, head to Blade, or one of the other shows Culpepper attends, with a pocket full of cash and select what works for you.

IMO, stag should only be purchased online once you know very well what shapes work for you, and you have a trusted source you can have select it. The difference between getting stag thin and paired with good texture, vs having a chubby clunker with all the personality ground away, is a fine margin. Great stag can't be beat, junk stag weakens the market for all of us, and personally I think that's why stag is so polarizing as a handle material. It is by far one of the trickiest materials to fit correctly. It has to be worked from the back as far as possible, with a keen understanding of the three dimensional nature. Figuring out what basic shape (curvature) works for your knives (especially when I assume we're talking about slipjoints here) is paramount. You've got an arch across the width, then flat, saddle, or swelled across the length, then variations in texture geography. Fitting wood and man made materials is child's play, by comparison.
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jdm61 said:
My understanding is that the flood of really nice material at fair prices that we saw say 2008-2010 was stuff that had already been "harvested" at the time of the ban and released by the Indian government for sale later. The reason for the ban was legit in my opinion, but really didn't gave anything to do with direct threats to the sambar deer population as pretty much all of the antlers we get are "sheds" You can tell that with a number of pieces because they clearly appear to have been lying on the ground of a couple of seasons. I have only had one piece that still had any velvet scraps on it and that may have been because is was the most popcorn piece that I ever bought an the scraps were very dried out and way down in the crevasses. From what I was told, the problem was that the guys who go out and pick up the sheds got greedy and lazy and didn't want to stomp around in tall grass looking for the antlers so they started sets fire to fields and such to burn down the grass so they could pick up their booty. .
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Yeah that's my understanding as well. There are still hordes of this material floating around in various locations, and I'm certain some of it still trickles out of India, and of course there are neighboring countries where Sambar Stag live, but don't get as large supposedly or have the populations. This material will likely never dry up completely, since the animal isn't extinct, and there aren't any major treaties banning the trade of the material, but it's just not nearly as available in large, competitive supply as it used to be.
 
Yeah, the Indian sambar species is supposed to be the second biggest deer around after the moose. Bigger even than those huge 1000 lbs plus mutant elk in Kentucky. I read that the males can get as big as 1250 lbs and parts of India, but 700-800 is more typical across he entire South and Southeast Asian range. they are listed as threatened, but realistically, that is an issue of habitat destruction, not knife handles.
 
jdm61 said:
You only have to use one color of Fiebings and it can be anything in the yellow to dark brown range. Same deal with wood like maple. I settled on light brown and fee years back. The more you apply, the darker it gets. That bowie is posted is a piece from OrigIndia done with light born. The limitation with coloring stag is oft times a result of the density of the piece as much as the coloring method. With that said, the density probably has more of an impact on the dying process than the prices that Culpepper uses. But I have had amber pieces that did not hols the same color as you ground into them. The dye only penetrated to a certain depth and that was it. In the case of Fiebings, I do the final coloring AFTER it has been ground to final dimensions.
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Yeah, I use Feibings also, believe me. Light Brown, Black, Dark Brown, and some others depending on what I'm going for and what part I'm touching up. My point is, none of them have the same color and "tone" as the amber dying that culpepper does. It's a completely different thing apparently, I know you're familiar with it, but there's a red/black powder left on the stag, and you get that rich color as you grind in. Part of what sets the amber dye apart, is the "sunset" blending variation in color. When using Feibings, you don't really get that, although you do get splotchiness sometimes.


Yes, there often is a color mismatch, that's due to the different complexion of the stag going into the dye. I sometimes think Culpepper only dyes the lesser stuff that isn't all that greatly matched to begin with, since the dying equalizes it some, compared to naturally colored stag that needs to be a near dead match for color to look worth a crap on a finished knife. If you match your own stag well, and then get it dyed, it can be significantly better.


Certainly not trying to be argumentative about DIY dye however, if you've got some tips I'm game to hear them. I've used every technique I've heard about and some I haven't however, and while you can get all sorts of looks, and it's certainly nice to even the tone of two different scales that may be slightly off, it's just not the same as the amber dye. That bowie you posted above looks great, but it's obviously a brown dye, and I wouldn't personally consider that amber stag. To each their own, of course.
 
Honestly is varies from pice to piece ad I think that is the case even with the "true" amber stuff. You are at the mercy of the stag and how much a particular will absorb. That bowie was about as dark as any I have ever made. Sometimes they are Much lighter and other times the tops of the "popcorn" that I just knock off a tiny bit will actually get darker than the parts that have been ground away more. Now if you want to see some interesting color vacation, put a light dye job on some oosic.
javand said:
Yeah, I use Feibings also, believe me. Light Brown, Black, Dark Brown, and some others depending on what I'm going for and what part I'm touching up. My point is, none of them have the same color and "tone" as the amber dying that culpepper does. It's a completely different thing apparently, I know you're familiar with it, but there's a red/black powder left on the stag, and you get that rich color as you grind in. Part of what sets the amber dye apart, is the "sunset" blending variation in color. When using Feibings, you don't really get that, although you do get splotchiness sometimes.


Yes, there often is a color mismatch, that's due to the different complexion of the stag going into the dye. I sometimes think Culpepper only dyes the lesser stuff that isn't all that greatly matched to begin with, since the dying equalizes it some, compared to naturally colored stag that needs to be a near dead match for color to look worth a crap on a finished knife. If you match your own stag well, and then get it dyed, it can be significantly better.


Certainly not trying to be argumentative about DIY dye however, if you've got some tips I'm game to hear them. I've used every technique I've heard about and some I haven't however, and while you can get all sorts of looks, and it's certainly nice to even the tone of two different scales that may be slightly off, it's just not the same as the amber dye. That bowie you posted above looks great, but it's obviously a brown dye, and I wouldn't personally consider that amber stag. To each their own, of course.
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jdm61 said:
Honestly is varies from pice to piece ad I think that is the case even with the "true" amber stuff. You are at the mercy of the stag and how much a particular will absorb. That bowie was about as dark as any I have ever made. Sometimes they are Much lighter and other times the tops of the "popcorn" that I just knock off a tiny bit will actually get darker than the parts that have been ground away more. Now if you want to see some interesting color vacation, put a light dye job on some oosic.
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Hmm, never tried that. I assume lighter colored oosic or does it matter? I've done some interesting stuff with pot perm and feibings on bone before however.
 
Why would you want stag that looks nothing like natural stag?
Stag is not orange. Stag naturally looks like a stick-bark on the outside, and light on the inside-just like wood.
 
The amber aniline dye from Lee Valley looks pretty good, in my opinion. I like it better than the leather dye.
 
javand said:
Hmm, never tried that. I assume lighter colored oosic or does it matter? I've done some interesting stuff with pot perm and feibings on bone before however.
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I would think that bone would be similar. Here is the one pice of oosic that I did. I think it has kind of a funky "antique" look which in my mind, if what you are gong for much of the time when you color these types of materials. This stuff was fairly light to being with and required some degree of shaping to work for this knife.
show_image_in_imgtag-1.php.jpeg
 
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Taximanny said:
I know of Cullpeppers but are there anymore...?

Thanks
Manny
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I saw some really really nice stag at the Little Rock show. I'll get their business card info and send it to you later on. It was sure expensive though. Like $120 and up for a set of scales.
 
Shaw Blades said:
I saw some really really nice stag at the Little Rock show. I'll get their business card info and send it to you later on. It was sure expensive though. Like $120 and up for a set of scales.
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It's almost guaranteed to be some of "Rootes of Ohio" (Tim Balda)'s stock. He sold off a large amount of it wholesale to misc people whom are reselling.
 
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