What Type Of Bone Button?

[Will Moore]

I have searched the forum and have found a lot of advice on cleaning bone buttons (all of which will be very useful!) but I just wondered, does anyone know what type of bone was used for the buttons on a concertina - a Lachenal in my case? Is it Ivory, Antler or something more basic - cow, sheep etc?

 

I have a slight queasy feeling when playing at the thought of what they could be made from, so I wonder if someone could put my mind at rest

 

Pic below:

[Geoff Wooff]

These are Bone , not Ivory. Some early Englishes do have Ivory buttons, but these will be Bone... not sure which animal but perhaps Horse or Cow is most probable... there were a lot of horses around untill the internal combustion engine took over our transport needs.

Edited September 1, 2016 by Geoff Wooff

[Will Moore]

Horse makes most sense - as you say there were a lot of them around That must be why they make a clip-clop noise when they are played

[Patrick McMahon]

Back in the day there were huge quantities of whale bones shipped to Europe for processing.

 

I remember back in the early 1970s I was living with some friends in a very old farm cottage. One winter's day there were a bunch of us with our girlfriends drinking and chatting in the living room. Gradually, we all became aware of a smell of fish. It got stronger and stronger, and we all started saying, "well, it's not me! " and all looking embarrassed.

 

Eventually we tracked it down to an overheating electrical socket adapter that was very hot to the touch. We had an electric fire on full power running through it. I later found out that all sorts of "plastics" were made using whale bone as the primary ingredient.

 

So it could be horse, cow or whale. Someone might know.

[Geoffrey Crabb]

According to my late father, his father and grandfather made concertina buttons from Cow shinbone.

 

Geoffrey.

 

 

[Dana Johnson]

There you go, when those chains go clanking in the night it'll be the cows coming for their shins.

Dana

[Will Moore]

It's ok Dana. They won't get very far without shins

[JimLucas]

Back in the day there were huge quantities of whale bones shipped to Europe for processing.

...

So it could be horse, cow or whale. Someone might know.

 

Definitely not whale, neither whale bone, nor "whalebone".

• Whale bone, -- i.e., the bones of the whale -- are not as dense as cow bones and would not likely be practical material for concertina buttons. (I do know of one concertina -- presumably owned by someone on a whaling ship -- where the fretted end plates were replaced with slices of actual whale bone.)
• The material known as "whalebone", which was widely used in making women's corsets (before the invention of plastic substitutes), is the baleen which mysticeti ("moustache whales") use to strain their food from the water. It's actually not bone at all, but protein... like fingernails and hair. And it's this, not the whales' actual bones, that the whalers brought back and sold.

 

I think horse bones would also be unlikely. While it's true that in the days before cars there were many more horses than today, there were still tremendously more cows (or bulls, bullocks, steers), which were being raised and slaughtered for their meat. Cows would be slaughtered in their healthy prime, while horses were generally not slaughtered until they became infirm, so I would guess that cow bones would generally offer both better and more consistent quality.

 

[Patrick McMahon]

It was an electrician who told me that whale bones were used in early plastics. I told him about the overheating adapter, and he said that bakelite was commonly bulked out with filler, and ground up whale bone was one of those. I have no idea if he was right, it hadn't occurred to me. I thought they must have added fish bones, for such a distinct fishy smell to come from the hot "plastic".

He was talking about the actual bones, not the baleen.

 

I saw a documentary on the now disused whaling station in South Georgia, and they said on that that the bones were not used much early on, but in later years, they were all shipped north for use in industry. I can't remember if they said what industry.

Could well have been fertiliser, or other non-engineering applications. If they were of good quality, you would think that they would have found many uses right from the start.

 

I'm tempted to repeat the experiment, and buy a very old plug or adapter at the car boot sale. (you still see them on sale as curios) and see what it smells like when you heat it.

Edited September 8, 2016 by Patrick McMahon

[JimLucas]

It was an electrician who told me that whale bones were used in early plastics. I told him about the overheating adapter, and he said that bakelite was commonly bulked out with filler, and ground up whale bone was one of those. I have no idea if he was right, it hadn't occurred to me. I thought they must have added fish bones, for such a distinct fishy smell to come from the hot "plastic"

 

Who to believe? What to believe?

 

It's been said in other discussions that a common test to see whether "tortoise shell" is real is to stick a hot needle into it, and that if it smells "fishy", then it's real shell from a sea turtle, but if it smells like burning plastic, then it's artificial. But your report -- it sounds like personal experience, yes? -- suggests the opposite.