Mostly just to hear myself talk..er..see myself in print, I thought I'd share a good story so that all can have a good laugh at my expense...trust me..I'VE certainly been laughing!
SO, to make a short story long. I had been working on a few sets of pipes using silver and mammoth ivory. So I try to keep my eyes open for good deals in certain places on the web and from dealers etc. I found an amazing "scrimshawed Inuit mammoth ivory ball" on ebay... I asked all the relevant questions etc. and snatched it up for an absolute STEAL of a deal.
It arrived a few days ago...I opened the package to find exactly what I had been hoping for...the thing was PERFECT...about 3.5" in diameter...no apparent "beaty lines" as dealers like to call them. WOW! The TUSK this thing must've come from to create a SOLID, uncracked BALL...ok..um..well..it felt a LITTLE light to me..but hope springs eternal..
I then proceeded to scrape off a bit of "patina and scrimshaw" (don't gasp, it was made in the 80's, was terribly ugly..NOT an artifact..sheesh!) to verify that it was indeed mammoth and not elephant. But I found to my horror that I could not see any of the cross-hatching that clearly identifies elephant/mammoth ivory. Rutt-Roh....I sanded a good chunk off....drilled a small pilot hole. Yep. Verification and clarifications. I had been had. Snookered. Bamboozled. Hood-Winked. Cheated. It turned out to be some sort of man-made material.
Ahh..but what?!
And there I was, frustrated at being cheated out of $40, NOT having a really good chunk of ivory. And yet, in my head( ever the "craftsman" ) I'm still trying to figure out what TYPE of material it is, and if I can still USE it for something. Unfortunately I found that it wasn't even GOOD fake ivory! It was dusty, and without any grain whatsoever. It rather reminded me of a chalk sculpture a former student of mine had given me.
And thus, not in a rage but out of curiosity, I flung the offending item at the floor (with some sort of subconscious image of it shattering like chalk) only to find myself instantly flat on my back (after having been knocked back into my workbench) and my head hurting like there was no tomorrow... I then slowly rose to my feet to find that after the ball had ricocheted off of my poor noodle, it had not only made an impact crater on my workshop floor, but had destroyed part of a whistle under construction and various other sundry necessary instrument parts.
I then found to my great horror, and shortly after ..my great amusement that the aforementioned offending sphere had left a rather substantial hematoma (sp?) on my poor brow which had begun to swell and look rather menacing. At this point, it was the size of a golf ball.
I then waddled into my house, chuckling at the image of myself getting bonked like the idiots from "Home Alone" or some stupid 70's/80's hanna barberra cartoon. Wasn't I somehow on the WRONG end of the DAvid and Goliath thing? My name IS David after all...
When my darling bride set her eyes upon be, she shrieked in horror (a very similar yelp that I had received years earlier following a nasty gun-powder incident).
And so, I turned to the mirror to gaze at my heinous, hideous reflection to find that I had somehow become cro-magnon man!! Of course, the fact that I hadn't shaved in weeks and was covered in ebony sawdust only highlighted my obvious, grizzly de-evolution into something subhuman.
Apparently, I AM the missing link. Goodbye.
..Oh yes, it swelled and swelled and obscured my vision...hurt like the dickens...but it's better now!! No cracks, no permanent damage...I'm still devilishly handsome AND I'm obviously still laughing about it!
