Prepping for Tordonshell Demo
Labor Day weekend will be the inaugural 18th Century Craft shindig here in Highland County, where I have been asked to demonstrate tortoiseshell craft. Events | Fair Lawn Farm (visitfairlawnfarm.com
Since tortoiseshell is a restricted material I will be focusing my efforts on the making and working of tordonshell, a convincing substitute I invented many years ago so that I could make Boullework, starting with a pot of hot hide glue and a few select additives. At the time I was contemplating patenting the formula, but then I con$ulted with a patent attorney and found out how much it would co$t to go through with it. Phooey on that, I just published the paper and moved on. (The estimate wa$ for a completed application and patent to co$t $25-50k.)
Along the way I made a lot of tordonshell things to make sure it mimicked tortoiseshell accurately, which will be of great interest to the powder horn crowd.
For the rest of this week and into next week I will be gathering the materials and rehearsing the demonstrations, beginning with discussions of the materials themselves and the making of tordonshell so that all the attendees can go home and make it themselves to use in their own craft work. It will also be a dry run for my next video project which I hope to begin filming this winter. I keep telling myself I cannot start a new one until I get the Gragg Chair video edited and posted on line.
Wrong patent attorney! Too late now, but it would be $7-8K, and less when you first started talking about faking it. Say around $4-5K in 1990.
The $25-50K would have covered the US, the EU, the UK, AU, CAN, and JP. Few people (individuals) go for all that and do just fine with US only.
It ain’t like you invented a biologic vaccine for Monkey Pox. Simple case.
Enforcement can get real pricey, but negotiation can often work wonders.