Originally posted by beoram
Yvsa -
a number of months ago we talked about replacing an ivory inlaid slab on the handle of one of my khuks with a piece of white tail deer horn. Moscow hide & fur which you directed me to was very helpful in selecting a piece, &c. I've got a slab roughly of the right size cut out, still need to work on it a bit; but I recall that you said you had some old ndn methods of treating horn.. It seems sort of greyish-white right now, I'm trying to match the yellowish ivory of the remaining inlay,
cheers as always,
--ben
Ben, first my apologies for not getting anything off to you, but the last few months was pretty rough, even for me. My intentions were good though.
As to the old ndn trick we use any brand of instant tea with the lemon added.
The citric acid helps opens the pores on bone enough to help get the tea color into the medium as well as helping it set so the color doesn't rub off.
The biggest problem is that tea isn't gonna give you an ivory color I'm afraid.
I think I would try some yellow food coloring with vinegar as the acid to try for the yellowish ivory color you're looking for. It may need to be mixed with some tea, or use first one and then the other, to match the color as the tea would tone down the bright yellow color of food coloring.
It would be nice if you had enough material to try to get the color on before you do the actual piece.
You need to be careful with the instant tea as it can color bone differently depending on how porous the bone is as well as how strong you mix the tea.
I mix it way to strong for anyone to drink and sometimes even boil the bone hairpipe beads in it to help darken the bone faster, it's not an instantaneous thing so you do have some time.
Another good trick to use after it's the color you want is to sorta fry the bone in hot oil, but I don't think I would try that if I was gonna glue the piece on as the oil may not let any glue adhere.
The hot oil gives the bone hairpipe beads a really antiqued look, most people can't tell the difference between new hairpipe that's been treated properly from the 100 year old beads.
Hairpipe was originally fashioned from the center of conch shells and was almost ceramic like, but the Europeans found that the ndns were getting the bone stems from the old clay pipes and using them instead and so they started making the bone hairpipe for sale and in different lengths and haven't ceased.
The business is probably greater today than it was 100 years ago.
And nowadays you can get the golden horn and the black as well as the golden horn dyed red.
, put a light finish on it and Ta-Da! - you can't tell the difference and it looks like it's always been there! 
