Thread: Scale rot example

Just spotted this on eBay UK and thought I'd post it as a warning...





It looks like a beautiful example of celluloid rot (if beautiful is the word). See how the blade damage matches the light-coloured parts of the scales?

It is possible it's cell rot, but no guarantees. That blade could have been just put up wet & left alone...

Originally Posted by shooter74743

It is possible it's cell rot, but no guarantees. That blade could have been just put up wet & left alone...

And the rust would match the light color in the scales so nicely? I doubt it.

Originally Posted by Oscroft

And the rust would match the light color in the scales so nicely? I doubt it.

I appreciate your all knowing knowledge & experience...

Originally Posted by shooter74743

I appreciate your all knowing knowledge & experience...

Hmm, I'll assume good faith and take that as wry amusement rather than sarcasm, shall I?

That looks like it could be more rust to me, it's patchy and not uniform. I would defer to shooter74743 on this, cell rot, if I'm not correct, presents itself as a line across the blade and eats it away. This would be an example of cell rot from another thread:

Originally Posted by Phrank

That looks like it could be more rust to me, it's patchy and not uniform. I would defer to shooter74743 on this, cell rot, if I'm not correct, presents itself as a line across the blade and eats it away. This would be an example of cell rot from another thread:

Pitting from cell rot often is patchy - it often tends to follow the lighter and more transparent celluloid, whereas normal rust doesn't.

It progresses from the line of closing of the razor, yes, and in the example you show the scale celluloid is pretty uniform in material so I'd expect a more uniform pitting from the rot (although it's way too far gone to have any idea how it would have started). Look at my example again - the pitting is pretty much within the closed line of the blade, and it's almost an exact match for the light color patches of the scales.

There's another example of pattern-dependent rot here.

And there's another example here from Brad Maggard - he clearly shows the correlation between clear celluloid and pitting.

While your example looks like cell rot ( and I would bet your right ) I think what Shooter is trying to say is that the only way to be sure is to test it. This discussion goes on back and fourth a million times in the e-Bay 101 thread. Are we sooo sure that the dye in those scales does not disperse water more than the clear ? Again you are probably right but the only way to say for sure is by testing. And I think that is already agreed upon by all those who have been collecting for years.

What sort of test??