I did a search through here and came up empty so I'm posting. I hope it's not old hat and I just searched wrong. Anyways here goes.

How can a novice like me identify scale materials? I have a razor from a flea market that I'm cleaning up and I noticed that the scales are much sturdier than most other razors I've gotten from flea markets (such as my griffon, geneva cutlery pyramid, etc.) Sturdier as in thickness to strength ratio. It's also a heavier razor by weight in general and the balance is nice. It doesn't look to me like bakalite or celluloid that I've seen in examples, but I'm no pro either.

Here's a few pics, high rez at http://www.procis.net/Razors, look through the index and click the ones that are not "mod" or "small" etc.