Featured Dragon Carving Material Need Help

It is always the little implements that suffer.

 

I don't bother with pins anymore.
Now I use a straight slot screwdriver. I heat it over my bonfire, then I drive it as far as it will go into the handle of that vintage celluloid hand mirror.
If it pokes through to the other side, then I know it is not ivory

 

I am glad you've learnt from all the good advice on Antiquers.

This is how they tested in the old days:

 

Yes, very accurate testing!

 

How'd you like being heated to red hot and jabbed into things?

Oh, I've been there !

 

When you performed your hot pin test, did you smell something akin to burning hair or instead, burning teeth? Burning hair smell is an indicator it is bone, burning teeth smell is an indicator it is ivory. The hot pin test is not just about if it pushes into the item or not.

Pay attention now here all you other posters making jokes and being silly.... I am posting a sensible post and asking a proper question. Grow up please now... Let's get serious. Norm... I shall await your answer in my closet with my computer monitor continuing my efforts to see if your dragon will glow under UV light in the dark.

 

So i got a black light and it did not glow so I'm going with the consensus that it is a bone carving. Thank you for all your help.

 

No smell when i tried the pin thing. It didn't even make a mark on it.

 

Thanks for the welcome good sir. Trust me im not the normal destroyer of precious things so i think the hot pin test was just a stupid choice on my part but i was just to interested in finding out what it was made of the I knew it was not plastic so i just want to see for sure. But we live and learn and now i know. PINS HATE FIRE.

 

"Examination using ultraviolet (UV) light
Examining an object thought to be ivory using ultraviolet light may help determine whether the material is ivory or made from another material. Using long wave ultraviolet light, materials will fluoresce different colors or absorb the UV light helping to characterize it.

All ivory fluoresces under UV light and appears bluish-white (Hornbeck 2010). Bone and shell have a similar fluorescence to that of ivory. Vegetable ivory will appear slightly orange or warmer in tone. Plastics will absorb UV light and appear dull blue (Espinoza and Mann 1992).

Samples of ivory, bone and ivory substitutes under longwave ultraviolet light(365nm). From left to right: mammoth ivory, bone, tagua nut (vegetable ivory), and celluloid."
https://www.conservation-wiki.com/wiki/Ivory#Identification


UV fluorescence will help distinguish ivory from plastic, but not necessarily from bone.