Thread: Ran-tan-karus

I had a pair of these Engstrom "made with wire rope" razors a few years ago which I scaled in vintage ivory. Sadly, I had to sell them and they wound up with a good friend. A good thing! The one I missed most was a super-smiling 4/8.
I missed shaving with that!
I finally procured another Ran-tan-karus smiler, 13/16+ in width, and set out to scale the blade in ivory. But I remembered I had an old set of scales with the devil logo left over from that pair I sold and dug them out. I was able to use the front scale and get this thing going nicely in Bakelite. Digging this thing. Hope you all like it!


The rear scale was broken, so I needed to match a rear scale.

Found a donor, 1/2 hole off, so I filed the pin holes inward on one scale and outward on the other, sized some of Babur's silver collars to the bottom and bolted it together there, filed the top even and sized some collars for that end.


Bolted all together and matched the scale halves as I described in this thread! http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...le-halves.html


Unbolted as sanding the contours and removed/indexed each collar for it's position in order to finish the scales


Next I dealt with the logo on the front scale. It IS a RED Devil, not a black devil, but all attempts to get a good red on the bakelite was not satisfactory. I practiced on the old, broken scale half till I hit on this. Rub-n-Buff silver, allowed to dry, colored by a liquid Sharpie, applied with pointed q-tips. It can be seen and looks good to me!



Ready to assemble now! Lead wedge original to the front scale.

Some more finished pics

Very nice Tom,,,,,,,,,,

Woot, woot. I love it

That could not have come out any nicer Tom.

Originally Posted by Hirlau

Very nice Tom,,,,,,,,,,

Originally Posted by guitstik

Woot, woot. I love it

Originally Posted by lz6

That could not have come out any nicer Tom.

Thanks, guys! It is sometimes cool to restore one which needs little on either the blade or scales. Fortunately, the blade needed little. I just polished it a bit and worked like the devil (pun intended!) on the scales!

That looks slick! May I ask where you obtained the "Babur's silver collars"? These look interesting

You're starting to get the hang of this thing Tom ..... I've got one of those too but a 5/8. Can't beat those smiling blades for shaving enjoyment.

Very nice. The little bit of coloring in the embossing really made it shine.

I had a couple of those back in my build/restore/sale hay-day. They were very good shavers. Wish I had kept one.