Galalith poker chip pick

[Varin]

Just wondering if any one else has done this. I ran across someone selling vintage galalith (caseinite) poker chips on ebay. No embossing or printing, just plain chips in various shapes and colors. I bought 9 blue 1 1/4" square chips for $11.78 including tax/shipping. Turned out to be about 1.1 mm thick. I broke the first one trying to drill holes in it (bad idea). The second one is my new favorite pick. I don't have power tools, so I shaped it with a 100 grit emery board and beveled/polished the tips with a 7-in-1 nail polisher, both from the cosmetics section of Walmart. Took a couple of hours. Had I had a choice, I might have wanted something thicker, but as it turns out, I'd have been wrong. This sounds just as good on the guitar as it does on the mandolin. If any one else wants to try this, just search ebay for galalith chip.

[Bill McCall]

thanks for the tip.

[Polecat]

How refreshing to read someone calling this material by its proper name! (rather than referring to it as casein, the protein from which galalith is made is named). Some years ago I bought a 2mm sheet of galalith from this source https://www.galalith.store/shop . They are based in France, and shipping to Germany was more expensive than the material itself! For people outside Europe it's probably not a viable option. The sheet will likely last me the rest of my life. My favoured approach is to taper the business end from roughly 1mm at the tip to full thickness 6 or 7 mm into the pick, I don't bevel the sides, just round them off. Depending on the angle of attack, the pick produces anythig from a trebleless modern bluegrass sound to a more cutting "folky" tone, which I like as it gives more tonal options. With daily playing, the picks last about a year, then need replacement. One of the characteristics of galalith (at least the material I acquired) is that with wear, the edge becomes rougher and scratchy, and needs repolishing, so my pick tin includes a piece of 1000-grit emery paper for use as and when necessary.

[sounds_good]

Thank you for explaining about the tone. Would someone please explain
if there some special attraction or historical significance to this material?

[Varin]

Would someone please explain
if there some special attraction or historical significance to this material?

This is the same material Red Bear uses in their $27+ picks. Search for Red Bear and you'll find lots of testimonials. Galalith is made from milk. It was very popular about 100 years ago for costume jewelry, buttons, and apparently poker chips.

[Bill McCall]

Got a set of those poker chips from the link above and filed 2 squares into pseudo 346 shape, the chips aren't quite big enough for a perfect match. They are about the same thickness as a Red Bear extra heavy (XH). Work just fine if you like a thick, stiff pick. Certainly an easy way to experiment with using different shapes and bevels, but I haven't done that yet. Takes about 15 minutes to shape one, so a pretty cheap way to try it out.

Galalith was used as a tortoise shell substitute as noted above.