Thread: Cell rot, can someone advise please

In this thread http://straightrazorpalace.com/show-...r-aquired.html -- I would say that member Muddy has made a nice purchase, but those multi-color celluloid scales shown are somewhat notorious for out-gassing. All celluloid will do it eventually, dampness and poor ventilation seem to hasten the deterioration of the blade.

Originally Posted by stimpy52

would say that member Muddy has made a nice purchase, but those multi-color celluloid scales shown are somewhat notorious for out-gassing. All celluloid will do it eventually, dampness and poor ventilation seem to hasten the deterioration of the blade.

Actually, I remember asking about celluloid on a pen forum or was it a company that produces pens in celluloid ? The response was that these days there are (at least) two different types of celluloid, one of which is the one used for old razor scales, the other kind is supposed to be far more stable chemically.

Anyone know about that?

There are way more then Two recipes that were used over the years, also the new Celluloid can also be prone to off gassing, Masecraft sent some out to me a few years back to test Major Failure

This is one of the reason that cell rot is so insidious as it has very few set in stone rules and is hard to diagnose unless it is in the later stages..

To simply malign Green scales or Tortoise or Multi-colors is a bad thing and is a bit deceptive

There are scales that have tendencies say the old Puma Faux Tortoise but a Clauss with Faux Tortoise is simply not the same animal the Puma has a high percentage of fail and the Clauss much lower

Dubl Duck scales along with Otto Desustch (green) are actually in the early years Catalin and have a high percentage of fail but later DD's were Celluloid and the percentage is way lower ..


What I an trying to say here is that there are very few rules to Cell Rot, I am not saying that what any one has posted is wrong, there is simply more to the story...

Do an advanced search using Neil Miller and Celluloid Rot as your terms, Neil forgot more about the old scale making processes then most of us ever knew


Edit: @Duncan - Once Celluloid begins to off gas there is nothing left to do but replace it

Thanks Glen. I completely agree that my "rules" which I did not intend to imply to be rules, were overly simplistic and therefore deceptive. They were only meant in the spirit of the original question, which was asking for things to watch for.

There should have been more emphasis on the word MIGHT.
It's Mr. Foxworthy's fault for not making that more clear.

Actually Ron I thought you did a darn good job with a difficult subject

My experience has been maybe one case of cell rot in 150 razor purchases. Although, that should have no statistical impact on the current ratio of those bay purchases having said rot. Food for thought if shopping/rolling the dice on the bay.

Nice discussion of the subject on Knife World here -- Celluloid.

My prejudice against the multi-colored celluloid scales is probably related to some ancient and hateful shortcoming in my cranial wiring. I'll schedule myself for re-education.

Another thing to remember is we usually see razors with textbook corrosion patterns and we have that fixed in our minds as to what cell rot looks like.

That can be dangerous because often times it will start in just one small area and if not recognized it spreads with lightening speed.

I had a razor that I saw a rust spot in one place maybe 5mm diameter and it was just a light spot that I cleaned and polished out easily and put back away. About three months later I took it out and it had been put away with some heavy duty silicon based preservative. Then there were two spots and I had serious pitting into the blade. It was cell rot. I had similar with a prize Puma Gold Razor. Just one small spot which rapidly became 3 spots and deep pitting.