Bismark with "Garibaldi" scales

I've always liked these "photo frame" type scales as I don't see them that often. This blade was in decent shape but the scales were so-so.
I cleaned up the blade and left it in a brushed finish but polished the spine and shaft.
Since I didn't want to use the scales but wanted the photo I went to my to do pile and found a nearly matching color set of scales on another razor. So I took them.
I removed the photo from the original scales and went about making a recess for it to sit in. It has to fit flush.
After a bit of fitting,,,cutting,,fitting etc. I got it to sit flush. And since the posts were gone I made pockets for them to fit into and made the pockets a bit wider on the bottom to act as anchors for the post to fit into when I epoxied it in place.
A fun evening project.

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The final steps and razor done.

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Beautiful restoration, and very cool job transfering the photo frame.
Grant

beautiful restoration job and great choice of person to put on there as a picture!

The image was already there so it wasn't really my choice. I've seen his image on other razors though.

Outstanding with that work. Thanks for sharing.

My pleasure guys, and thanks. It seemed to make more sense than slapping on a set of Micarta or something. I love the old stuff and try to keep it where possible. It's very cool somehow.

Can I ask, how did you route out the shape?

I used a tiny ( think dental bit) ball end cutter. Once the main area was relieved I then switched to a square end cutter in a typical router style application. Couldn't breathe while doing this as one little slip and all would be lost. That plastic against a high speed cutter disappears rather quickly!
A bit of a balancing act as too slow the bit wants to grab and walk.. too high and you just make a melted blob on the bit. Diamond cutters just wrapped themselves in melted plastic. Open style cutters at around 20,000 rpm seemed to work best.

Reay nice,
and thanks for the tid bit on the speed with the cutting bit. That will help narrow the learning curve on a few projects I have in mind.

Obviously try it on some old shot scales first to get a feel for it before you sacrifice some nice ones. The bits are commercially available but ask your Dentist to save used bits for you. The shanks are usually very short but they're still sharp enough for this stuff but not for teeth and they're free.