What's new
What's new

Ivory grips anyone?

That is not going to have one iota of effect on elephant poaching.

Libs and mindless bunny huggers will never get the logic right. In order to reduce poaching you must make it unprofitable. In order to do that you must increase the supply thereby driving the price so far down that it no longer pays to poach them. Countries that burn the seized ivory are doing more harm than good. By selling ivory on the open market and using the proceeds to fund anti-poaching efforts would hit poaching on two fronts. They just made invory more expensive and poaching more profitable.
 
Beyond me to fix that, mostly machinists hang around here, figured someone here might want a faux set of ivory grips. Evidently they can introduce imperfections in this stuff to make it look more realistic than the older faux material.

Professional gunsmiths may know of better materials.
 
I've always thought one solution may be offering hunts for poachers like other animals are hunted. It would help the local economy too. I bet the market for ivory is bigger than the supply so the idea of driving down the price wouldn't work.
 
That is not going to have one iota of effect on elephant poaching.

Libs and mindless bunny huggers will never get the logic right. In order to reduce poaching you must make it unprofitable. In order to do that you must increase the supply thereby driving the price so far down that it no longer pays to poach them. Countries that burn the seized ivory are doing more harm than good. By selling ivory on the open market and using the proceeds to fund anti-poaching efforts would hit poaching on two fronts. They just made invory more expensive and poaching more profitable.

Exactly. You understand economics.
 
Exactly. You understand economics.

Actually he does not.

As DavidScott mentioned you are not changing the demand curve by the introduction of more supply in this instance.
In fact you may even increase it by further legitimizing the product and improving market conditions therefore incentivizing further illicit harvest.

The economic model which is working is selling something which does not exist anywhere else in the world- an intact environment with its native species alive.
The conservation model is a product.

Biological parks and tourism might be the thing that finally drags some places out of poverty and backwards ruthless dictatorships.
God know something is needed.
 
thank you Fred for an interesting and potentially very useful post,

I am very curious to see some of this product up close.

anyone actually worked with it?
 
From what I've read, the poachers are usually excruciatingly poor people who have little choice but to do this to feed their families. They don't make a ton of money off it, it's the middle-men who do. If you want to reduce poaching (and other crime), give the people a better way to feed their families.
 
From what I've read, the poachers are usually excruciatingly poor people who have little choice but to do this to feed their families. They don't make a ton of money off it, it's the middle-men who do. If you want to reduce poaching (and other crime), give the people a better way to feed their families.


If they were poor and hungry, wouldn't they be taking the meat from the kills? Something doesn't quite add up there.

JMHO

-Ron
 
Try to buy a tiny piece of antique carved ivory on ebay and you will see that ivory has been cancelled.

My aunt married the guy who owned the last working 4 masted schooner, that did the fir trade in AK. She visited AK in the 60s and brought home boxes of walrus carvings. Maybe that is how this little thing got into my father's junk drawer.

Carving 20210602_110653.jpg
 
Professional gunsmiths may know of better materials.

It's actually the shooter you want to ask.

You want LOOKS ... or FUNCTION?

Looks? I can collect photos of other peoples "artwork". And not even have to store or clean the firearm. Better yet, just a memory or three, of "that's nice looking work", no need even for photos!

:)

I can't SEE much of a(ny) grip when it is in my hand.

Function?

"Hard rubber".. which is no longer really "rubber" nor necessarily "hard", either, but a better elastomer engineered / selected specifically FOR handgun grips ..is my favorite. Because it JFW works the best.

Second and subsequent shot placement benefits from a comfortable - and above all reliably repeatable and STABLE - grip.

Nature of the beast for what a handgun is asked to do.

That's all there is to it for a shooter, not a "collector".
 
I have real ivory grips that are on my 9mm Browning High Power.
Yes, an old wartime gun so exempt from the laws.

Wow, just looked them up and they seem rare, old colt ivories are $400 and more.
 
I have real ivory grips that are on my 9mm Browning high power.
Yes am old wartime gun

I WAS going to put Pachmayr's onto the Taurus 92AF instead of ....WTF is it? "Goncalo Alves"? But the wood works OK for a the medium mass - about half of it magazine - and low-power 9 mm round. Even so, not much as handguns go, so it is promised to a buddy.

Both of the "Basque Lawyers" have ex-Eibar standard "rubbery" grips that work a treat. Had anything thicker on the "Megastar" even a hand that wears an XL or XXL glove would be hard pressed to keep good control. I CANNOT use a .50 AE "Desert Eagle" due to grip front-to-back stretch.. for example. Or I'd have a pair.

Wheelguns are a whole different animal. Outdoors in the weather, staghorn can make more sense than Ivory.

Either way.. having no bulky nor "straight-line" magazine to squeeze into the grip allows a LOT of choices.

Wheelguns can be custom made to fit anything from tiny-lady hands to big-handed pro athletes who can grip a basketball as it it were but a grapefruit, or a football as if it were a frag grenade. So can "broomhandle" Mauser-style pistols/machine-pistols - the reason the then-dimunitive Chinese loved them and made so damned MANY of them. Their "Shanxi" was chambered in .45 ACP, though. Not your average "Parabellum" wimp.

Better nutrition the last 40 years, so the Chinese are "mostly" back up to much the same size as any other human, current generation.

:)
 
Try to buy a tiny piece of antique carved ivory on ebay and you will see that ivory has been cancelled.

My aunt married the guy who owned the last working 4 masted schooner, that did the fir trade in AK. She visited AK in the 60s and brought home boxes of walrus carvings. Maybe that is how this little thing got into my father's junk drawer.

View attachment 322188

Is walrus ivory and elephant ivory legally treated the same?
 
Is walrus ivory and elephant ivory legally treated the same?

No. Even so, Elephants are not the ONLY endangered species.

Ton of info online if you care. We had enough of it I HAD to care, because even "Grandfathered" goods are subject to limitations just to legally cross a US State line or change hands amongst family members or within an Estate.

Experts, and even amateurs who have the need, can tell them apart from the far more common material sold to naive tourists (and my G'Dad and 2 Uncles in the Merchant Marine, or Dad in the souks of Bahrain whilst building Dhahran Airfield's new runways for B-36 use) AS "ivory".

As with MOST Tourists thinking they have a rare shot at valuable treasure- never stopping to wonder why a small hole-in-the wall stall always HAS "goods of great value" still to-hand as hundreds of customers a week pass through?

They mostly got f**ked!

:)

Even fully synthetic Ivory is one of the OLDEST of all manmade synthetics that is any good at its job!

Much of it when "natural" is actually carved from the teeth of ignorant Middle Eastern CAMELS... who were worked hard, held in high regard, valued immensely.. and died of natural causes.

No "poaching" was involved until it came time to eat them.

Tough country. Tough crowd. Tough meat. Too severe to waste anything .. before it was discovered folks would actually pay more than two US dollars a barrel for ARAMCO's light, sweet, Arabian crude oil!

Folks adapt.
 
I dont know much about ivory, I think it would hard to make a matching box.
jIDMtFn.jpg

Buffalo Bill had it right, have the revolver point to the right, then you can grab that thing quick!
 
Donie,
With faux ivory you could print a matching box. Presentation grade stuff you got there! Sure catches the eye.
 
I didnt think of printing a box.
Boxes are fun to make, but carving those grips was alot harder then I thought it was going to be.
The revolver was my grandfathers, the walnut for the grips and box is from a tree he planted, the tree was constantly banged into by cars, giving it the wild grain.
 








 
Back
Top