Thread: Thiers Custom Restore in Pre-Ban Elephant Ivory

Noswad sent me this old Thiers to work on.. It is a Thiers "Welcome" that had some very faded etch that marked it as "Pour Barbaras Duras".. Thiers took a rather novel approach to this For Heavy Beard razor from what I see the razor had minimal hone wear, when I got it and I was looking at the spine thickness in relation to the blade size, and honestly I think the idea here was a slightly steeper bevel (which in theory would be stronger).
I polished out the blade, then took on working a set of the Pre-Ban Ivory that Noswad sent me for the scales...

I had to make some decisions on how to work them, compared to "Vintage Ivory".

First I mic'd every piece of Vintage Ivory scales I had sitting on the bench they ranged in thickness from .060 - .750..
I mic'd the pieces of Ivory that I had selected ~.128 and ~.121 so I used the belt sander and evened them up to .100.. I cut out the Classic Thiers double diamond shapes and used the best looking parts of the grain in the Ivory for 2 Bookended scales..
Next I sanded these smooth to 400 grit and had to make my next decision on a direction to go.. The "Wedge", on near every single set of Vintage Ivory I have seen, they used a lead wedge, mostly IMHO to help balance that razor and those super thin light weight scales.. I didn't have those restrictions so I chose to go with a splash of color and a Turquoise wedge...

Next decision was about the pins which I knew I was going Nickel Silver, but was I going to use washers or not ???? I looked at it both ways, I even walked away from it and worked on another razor. Finally I decided to go with what I know works, and chose a small SS washer...

The final thickness on these came out to be .093 after all the sanding and polishing, BTW I used up to 600 grit then switched to a Buffer and Plastic polish and finally Ren-wax and a soft cloth...The warm glow that Ivory has is hard to beat and also hard to catch in pics...