I brought my cow elk Ivories home with me, but forgot where I put them. when I found them, the "meat" that was on them is pretty dry. How do I clean the old dried meat off w/o hurting the Ivories? Soak in coca cola? soak in boiling water, etc? Any help appreciated!

Just pick it off. Comes off fairly easy. Rub them on your jeans and they’ll polish right up.

I always scrape the roots off with a knife. If it’s thick and dried up you can probably soak them in water for a day and then scrape it right off.

Same here

You can soak them in water for sure and then scrape the bigger pieces of meat/cartilage off with a knife. Once you get all the pieces off that you realistically can, I then just put them in my pocket for a few weeks. They'll rub against your change, pocket knife, keys, whatever it is that's metal in there and those ivories will shine right up.

I put them in a brass tumbler, with walnut hulls, do the same with big pig tusks, hunters like to take them home with them for trophy's, but don't know how to clean and polish them, put them in at night when I get home take them out when I leave in the morning. Works great. Rio7

I've always boiled mine...just don't boil them too long.

An old timer that I used to work with would boil and clean his ivories, then put them in a small cloth sack with tobacco and carry them around in his pocket for a few weeks to polish them.

Thanks guys!

Give the ivories a soak in Hydrogen Peroxide, cleans them perfectly. I soak overnight, gently scrape off the softened tissue and give them another short soak. I clean lots of them.

I have a couple of 5-gallon buckets of them. I put a few handfuls at a time in my tumbler with corncob media. Half hour, tops. Shines them right up.

Ted is spot on.👍

if you can find tin oxide polish it creates an incredible deep polish if that is what you want. Mrs Wrights silver polish is what most AK Native ivory carvers use on ivory.

Thanks again guys! Pharmseller...is that 10gallons of "elk ivory" or Pig Ivory? ha

Bull ivory, but just from the ones I wanted to keep. Meat bull ivory I use in my French drains, works better than gravel.



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Hold your arm up so you can save your watch. It’s too late for your boots.

Makes great bedding material for your lizards, too.




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Place in wife’s purse- the kind that is like a tote bag full of everything. They will scrape around against change, finger-clippers, breath mints and every conceivable item.
Wife is carrying her Elk ivories around from elk she shot in 17. She is pretty proud of them.

i put them in a fire ant bed for a couple days.

I have a 55 gallon drum full of Elk ivory. I just screw the lid on tight and roll it down a hill. They all polish up fine. (Grinning)

I tried that with my leftovers and mismatched buglers. It works better if you add a pound or two of crushed walnut to the mix.



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