Saving bone dust/shavings?

[tadej bratkovic]

Hey guys, just wanted to ask you, I have been working on my nut blanks and I prepare my own bone and sizing down the thickest pieces of bone gave me a pile of bone dust and shavings. I am using a carbide rotary burr to shape them and I have it for at least half the freezer bag by now.

Should I throw it away or save it? Is there any use for it? Like making a slurry pore filler with CA? Any tips and experience welcome. Thanks!

[Kerry Krishna]

 I have a few tiny bags of it that I use for nut repair. It depends on the grain size of the dust in your case I think. 

[Mike Kolb]

Oh yeah... many little plastic bags filled with 'em and labeled accordingly!

The trick (I've found) is to save only the "clean" stuff. There's lot of material generated that gets contaminated with other shavings, steel wool fragments and general dirt-dust.... and it's no fun trying to pick-out minuscule little gremlins from a otherwise nice pile o' dust.

I'll also save various colors of plastic dust, just in case. "But wait! It doesn't end there! Call in the next 20 minutes" and I'll share my various graduated sizes of different shavings!  Seriously, sometimes I'll want a fine sawdust and other times a larger, more granular pile works better.  

Anal-retentive?  Probably... but It's not just for breakfast anymore.

[Hesh Breakstone]

Maybe the next time I change my bag on my Festool CT22 HEPA I should list the full bag on eBay....  Who knew.... people actually want this stuff?

I guess that I'm anal-retentive in a different sense in so much as I spend a great deal of time and effort chasing dust to get the stuff out of my shop and life...  And before you go there I'm well aware that many Luthiers are basically pack rats who believe that if there is one in a thousand odds that something may be useful someday, in the long run..., then let's save it, heat it, light it, organize it, bear the opportunity cost of letting it live and take up space when space is limited AND expensive too if one leases their facilities and pays by the foot for space.

Some ebony dust in an envelope is something that I'll keep and I'll make my dust in real time if I need something different.  Bone dust as a fill for nut slots never worked well enough for me to use this method so we prefer to use UV cured dental fillings for nut slots - hard or harder than teeth and not puffed out with CA.  And yes you can match the color/shade too when need be.

These days I'm far more interested in doing as much as possible with a minimum of stuff, tools, substances, etc. as I sit here in my shop's office looking at shelf after shelf of stuff... that I saved for the day and have yet to use.

What should you do you asked?  What ever you wish my friends - that's my plan.  Any takers on a partially full Festool vac bag?  Our dust collector has a couple of cubic feet of dust in it and that could be available too for the right price... ;)

[Kerry Krishna]

Hesh, thanks for that post. Tell me,how much is the UV light setup and were would I get this stuff?

And as far as the 'puffed out' comment, I always REALLY tamp that dust down, and as soon as the CA is applied, I sprinkle a bit more dust on and really compact that too. It works for me.

Mike, I also have several small /tiny bags filled with unadulterated ebony dust and various particle sizes of bone dust. The bone dust , if I have to actually make it, is done with a really fine, SUPER clean small file. Otherwise all kinds of contaminants will get in, and man, it is sure easy to see them!

  

[Hesh Breakstone]

Kerry my friend we have a dentist client who donated his older UV teeth filling gear and some of the fill, etch, etc. to us when he replaced his stuff with new gear.  Dentists make wonderful friends to a Lutherie business in so much as there are a number of things that they use that are helpful in the repair biz such as retired dental burs.  So not something from Stew-Mac, yet...

[Mark A. Kane]

A much easier material to work with is baking soda. No dirt, filings, cures white and super hard. Takes water thin CA well.