Jean, I have quite a few whale's tooth carvings, a couple are scrimshaws, the others are ornaments, and that is apart from hilts, I also have a number of whale's teeth.
I've just gone and had a look at a few of these. I think it would be true to say that the core of the tooth patinates to a dark yellow, but in a freshly carved tooth without patination this is not the case. Close examination of a freshly carved tooth --- one that has been carved during , say, the last ten years --- does reveal a very, very slight tint of yellow, but not the deep yellow that can be seen in an old carving or an old tooth. You can see this quite clearly in the tips of the group of uncarved teeth above:- the tip, where the core shows through is a deep yellow, the outside of the tooth is whitish --- or as you say, the core of the broken large tooth.
Many years ago I bought a lot of whales teeth that had been recovered from the sea bed in Western Australia. In the time when whaling was acknowledged as a legitimate activity, a whaling station in the area had dumped its rubbish into the sea at this spot. In the 1960's or 1970's, I forget which, divers recovered these teeth and at that time there were a lot of them for sale in Australia. I've been getting them carved and scrimshawed ever since. I also used a few for knife handles when I was involved in custom making.
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