carvability

English

Alternative forms

• carveability

Etymology

carve +‎ -ability

Noun

carvability (uncountable)

1. The quality of being carvable; workability with regard to carving.
   • 1956, Army Medical Service, “Oral Disease. RDB Project Card Continuation Sheet.”, in Consolidated R&D Annual Project Report‎^[1], United States Army, page 610:

     The clinical characteristic selected for this test was the "limit of carvability," the amalgam consistency at which the dentist feels that further carving embodies an excessive risk of fracture. A punch test approximating pure shear loading was selected to measure this property. Results of hand-carving tests made on specimens indicate that the clinical limit of carvability is approximated closely by that time at which the load required for punching is 25.5 lb.

   • 1969, KD Jorgensen, K Isenoumi, “The relationship between tensile strength and carvability of dental amalgams”, in Acta Odontol Scand, volume 27, number 1, →DOI, →PMID, pages 47–54:

     None of the specifications, however, contains any method for determination of the carvability of the amalgam, and so far no correlation seems to have been shown between an objectively measurable property of dental amalgams and their carvability. It is the purpose of this work to investigate whether the carvability of amalgam is correlated with its tensile strength.

   • 2023, Michael Denis Higgins, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: Science, Engineering and Technology‎^[2], Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 129:

     Dentine owes its strength and carvability to its composite nature—pure hydroxylapatite is brittle but cracks in ivory are stopped where they run from the crystals into the organic part of the material.