Natural strings for musical instruments

I have been trying to get ahold of “catgut” (actually sheep or other ruminant intestine, almost never cats!) for making new ukulele strings. A local sheep farmer says there is some kind of special regulation in place regarding the intestine. He said he would look into it. In the meantime, have you ever played or made catgut strings?

Having still not heard back, it seems like something where you have to be the farmer or hunter, obtain it semi-legally from a friend, or else maybe buy the gut commercially.

On the other hand there is a lute from Alaska which uses spruce root for a string. I have not tried, but it seems interesting. Maybe other kinds of tough roots would work too--honeysuckle? black locust? My guess is that it would have to be sufficiently dense and tough that you could string it and it would make a sound but not snap. In West Africa, akonting, etc. strings used to be made with palm roots before fishing line became available.

I wonder if "natural sausage casings" would work.  They are cleaned intestines of sheep or cow depending on the size.  I can special order them from most butcher departments in the grocery store, or the small butcher shop.  But the ones I got were packed in salt, so I don't know if that would still work.

I saw some real gut ukulele strings on amazon.ca but the price of one string was considerably more than I've paied for the ukulele and all the accessories so far.  

I am going to ask at my local string instrument shop in the next few weeks.  They are usually cheaper than amazon for stuff like this...usually.

Following your adventure with interest.  

While I cannot speak to musical instruments, I remember when I worked in an Operating Room that there was sutures referred to as catgut.

A bit of research indicates that some of them are in fact made of collagen sourced from ruminant intestine.

I was curious about the process and found a website that details it - https://shop.gamutmusic.com/pages/making-gut-strings?srsltid=AfmBOooy9WgB31OmH2zoflGvB7g4TtBel8gwyuO8BoIlUzfzXd7DNA_9

Looking up examples of silk strings, found this. It really sounds more like steel than like nylon to my ears!

Might be steel wrapped? It's hard to see close up.



This one definitely looks like real silk.