Mammoth ivory finishing question please

[javand]

Unfortunately the answer is: It depends.

If it's interior mammoth from Mark, it'll work consistently and easily. It's not as butter smooth to work with as interior elephant, but it's close. As I said about though, and it applies to both interior and bark, it all depends on the age, and condition of the ivory. There's no guarantee of consistency, when dealing with material of so many variables, age, location it was procured, mineralization level, contact with other minerals, moisture content, and decay. It's the same with bark, but yes, they can be different, it's not uncommon to find some really hard or brittle bark, but that seems less common with interior, but I think there's a higher level of discretion about what's really "usable" when it comes to interior material.

Stuff from Alaska can be very different than stuff from Siberia, but so can two pieces from the same vendor, that may be thousands of years apart in age, hardness, etc.


However, it's nothing like the extreme difference of antler pith and bark. Hope that answers your question somewhat, although I know it's far from a simple, or definite, explanation.

 

[kuraki]

Yes, it does, thank you very much.

And it lends me to believe buying from someone like Mark will be less expensive in the end than trying to find less expensive examples.

 

[stezann]

i don't know if you went through my posted link, but Natasha explained the long and detailed procedure it takes to properly cure permafrost's tusks.
I am confident the market it's full of badly, unevenly dryied pieces, thus the resulting workability might reflect this condition.
So you are right, if Mark has the nice stuff you are going to save money in the long run than by collecting unknown history pieces on the web.