Thread: W. Greaves & Sons Ne Plus Ultra Wood Scales--Type Wood? Original?

Originally Posted by Phrank

Thinking of the potential water surrounding a straight razor, I might think it would be mahagony....only reason I say this is I used to make fishing lures using that type of wood....can't really tell from the grain.

I agree that it could be mahogany as I have a set of mahogany scales and they do look somewhat similar. There was plenty of Honduran mahogany around in the day as fine furniture was made from it. Walnut was also used and seems to be a harder wood. Thanks for your input Phrank. This may be in the "too hard to do category" as a lot of these wood grains tend to look alike to me.

Sand them off a bit. Maybe they are wood? If so, someone made them darn close to the originals and painted them black?
If so, perhaps sanding them clean and applying a finish would be cool. If someone made them of wood, it was certainly long ago!
Might be worth saving, IMO

I have no intention of replacing them. They are a thing of beauty and fine craftmanship. I have just never seen wood scales like this before in the five years I've been into restoration work. I may try to buff them a bit, softly. If horn, all of the brown color would turn black and shine up, if wood they should stay as is?

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Yezzzz, Mike! I know you have seen pics of these scales before!

...Har!

OK, About face! Here is an old Greaves 'Philadelphia Razor' For which someone made long grain hickory scales long ago.
I sanded them good and hit them with Minwax Polyurethane stain. Original iron collars and lead wedge!

Originally Posted by sharptonn

OK, About face! Here is an old Greaves 'Philadelphia Razor' For which someone made long grain hickory scales long ago.
I sanded them good and hit them with Minwax Polyurethane stain. Original iron collars and lead wedge!

Sweet! Was the original color of these scales black (painted/stained) or were they natural?

I am somewhat curious why my razor doesn't have bullseye collars considering its age but alot of them from this period had the standard smaller washers/collars. I can live with the smaller collars. They look fine, although I do like the old the bullseyes.

Oh, They were gray and dried out, not painted, however. I suppose that then, as now, some did not care about saving collars or did not have the skills to do so. Certainly many were made without big collars, but Greaves seemed to favor them, FME.

Keep on looking......Still may be horn!
Seems a lot of built-up lather and crud inside the scales. Need to unpin completely, I think!

Austin,
I was going to say the same. They're horn but look like wood sometimes. I don't know what to say. I've had quite a few horn scales look like wood with wood looking grain but I never tried the test because I was under the assumption they were horn.

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Keep on looking......Still may be horn!
Seems a lot of built-up lather and crud inside the scales. Need to unpin completely, I think!

Actually they are pretty clean. Not hardly any lather build up at all. I can see the wood grain on the inside of one scale and paint or stain residue as I am not sure the inside was painted. The other scale without the paint wear and with some minor worm (?) holes or chips could in fact be black horn. I will redo that side with the hot pin test tomorrow. Taking the scales apart would certainly answer much of this but don't know if I am ready for that yet. Going to take this restore real slow.