How to Process Bone - Luthier Tips du Jour Mailbag
In this episode, Robbie O’Brien and Heidi Litke talk about how to process bone for nuts and saddles.
Video Transcription
[on-screen text reads: Luthier Tips du Jour Mailbag]
Mailbag question: Have you ever processed your own bone, nut and saddle material?
Robert O'Brien: Today's Tips du Jour Mailbag question comes to us from England. "Robert, have you ever processed your own bone, nut and saddle material? If so, how do you do it? Steven, in England."
Steven, I have never processed my own bone material. I know people that do. It is quite a lot of work. When I was living in Brazil, I had a friend that processed it for me, thank God, because it can get messy. And like I said, it's a lot of work. Recently I was in Canada. I visited with Luthier, Heidi Litke, of Red Sands Ukuleles. She processes her own bone and nut and saddle material, and she showed how it was done. I had the camera rolling, so let's go visit her.
How to process your own bone material
Heidi Litke: So I'm going to show you what I do in my shop. I like to buy everything locally and one of the things that you can do locally is your bone, nut and saddle. I found an article about 10 years ago. His name was Sean Berry. He wrote this article and I found it on the internet and that's what I've been following. It actually just happened to show up in the American Luthier Magazine recently in the summer edition of 2016. So it's kind of cool.
Procure and clean the bone
What I did was I went down to my local meat processing plant. You can also go to your local butcher and get some stewing beef bones. It's all full of just meat all over it and it's red. But you get this bone, and you bring it home, and you boil it. You boil and boil and boil and boil it and get all the gristle out and all the meat off.
And I just scrape it off and clean it up to this. This is what it looks like after I've boiled it for 2, 3, 4 hours and cleaned it up. And if it's not done, I just throw it back in, and I boil it again.
Cut into smaller pieces
Then what I do is, I cut it up into a whole pile of these little little pieces and I take it over to my bandsaw and I just, here's a really nice thick one, for example. It looks kind of nasty on the end, but once you cut it open, it kind of looks like this. So I just cut strips in all different shapes and sizes, whatever I can cut on my bandsaw. I cut those.
Degrease
The next step is you need to clean, degrease it. And it's very important to do this step. A lot of people miss this step and what happens is they make their nut and saddle, and over time the grease seeps out of your nut and saddle and pretty much wrecks your instrument.
It gets into the wood, and you can not get it out. So please do not skip this step. I use a white fuel. This one happens to be Coleman Camping Fuel, and I just simply put it in glass jars and I let it soak, and I think it only says for a week or so, I just leave it in here until I'm ready to use it.
Bleach white in the sun
So, after that, it comes out like this, and it's fairly yellow at first, and all I do then is just throw it on my back porch during a hot sunny day and I let it bleach white. So I just leave it there. So as you can see, here's one that is sanded up already. Not actually to the actual size yet, but look how white and beautiful that is. And that's what I use for my bone, nut and saddles.
Robert O'Brien: So Steven in England, thank you very much for your question. And if you decide to process your own bone, nut and saddle material, you now know how. So happy building.
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