Mammoth Molar Handle Two-Blade Folding Pocket Knife, Dyed Fossil Tooth Scales

North America, United States. A two-blade folding pocket knife whose handle scales are cut from the molar of a woolly mammoth. Each scale is sawn across the tooth, so its stacked enamel plates and the cementum between them show as alternating stripes across the grip. The tooth has been dyed in shades of russet and coral, and the stripes now run from glacial blue-white to dark red-brown. Polished steel bolsters cap both ends, and the rear bolster curves into a rounded pommel. The mirror-finished clip-point main blade and the smaller secondary blade each have a long, decoratively milled nail nick for opening by hand. Notched filework runs along the blade spines and the backspring, giving a modern working tool a grip made from Ice Age tooth. Mammoth molars grind food with a stack of enamel ridges (lamellae) held together by softer cementum. A woolly mammoth's tooth could hold more than twenty of these ridges, so a lengthwise cut gives the regular banding that knifemakers prize. Most of the raw material comes from Pleistocene deposits in the Arctic permafrost and from river gravels. The tooth is stabilized with resin and often dyed before it can be shaped into durable handle scales. Item # 205094

Estimate:$350

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