This 7/8 straight razor is marked GELLÉ AINÉ & CIÉ, PARIS. Although not marked such, it would appear to have been made by Rameau à Sens. I suppose you could call it a faux frameback .

For the most part it had a nice patina, but there were also spots of deep rust, so sand and polish away . Scales were of black horn with a white bone wedge. At the time I didn't think were original. I thought the original scales must be a mismatch to the blade, and why I went to replace them, maybe wrongly so. I have since, put them on a different blade. When fully closed, the blade would rub against the rear of the wedge. In hindsight, that may have been a feature. Almost 1/8" of the sharp side of the blade would be extended below the bottom of the scales when fully closed. With care, if not closed fully, and only closing until it rubbed the wedge, it would not protrude. Although when left this way it had an odd angle of the spine not running parallel to the top of the scales.

For some reason I thought this French blade would be fun with sparkly scales. I got the glitter purple acrylic from gentlemensbest.com, sanding down to the shape I liked. It is impossible to capture the 3D sparkle and depth of the scales with the camera. I hadn't thought of using this vendor, until reading an SRP post asking about them (thanks that original poster and SRP!)

I thought the purple and sparkle were reminiscent of stars against a midnight sky, so with the brass pins, stars are used as washers. The stars are 5mm solid "brass floret spacer beads" that I found reasonably priced at ebay, sanding them down to my desired thickness.

Continuing with the purple and gold is a brass wedge that was hammered and sanded down from some flat stock.

Originally I couldn't find any information about the razor, but I think I have learned some history since, and will post that elsewhere later.


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