Thread: Confusing the next generations

As I was at the gathering this weekend I started thinking about all the beautiful razors the have been striped of their scales in order to add custom scales. And this is where this question comes from. Should razor customizers mark the inside of their scales so that in a few generations when we are all dead and gone razor enthusiasts will have an easier time distinguishing these razors from the originals. I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this issue either way.

They should be marked as "altered" and have a "certificate of alteration" describing the alteration,date of alteration, name of alterer, and reason for alteration, and you should be the bureaucrat that has to log, verify, certify, file and store all of this vital information. Have fun Doc!

No problem Like I said I welcome all opinions. I just know all the work we put into researching razors and would hate it if in a few generations people thought Double Ducks came from the factory with cool walnut scales.

I would like to see a data base of the razors as they were. So that in the future people will now what they looked like.

I'm thinking about cars here, we all see Ford Model A's with V8's in them. Disc brakes, 9 inch rear ends etc.Very few will ever see a real Model A. But to the real car guys, some will restore them as close as they can to original.

While others modify and update them. I think both trains of thought should be respected. It takes a lot of work to make it look like no work was done. It takes a lot of thought to refine something and still make serve its task.

I would like to see the restoration guys make an effort to show what it was. While the other guys show what it could be.

Just my thoughts,
Ken.

there will be plenty of examples of originals around, plenty of collectors that don't want them changed.

The thing to remember is, depending on who is doing the work, the razors we have reworked end up better than the originals ever were. back then they were simply tools, be turned out as fast as they could. I just had one rescaled in buffalo horn, you won't find any original done as well.

the materials are so much better now too.

but what do I know.

Red

If the SRP data base lasts for the generations they will have a reference that will be hard to beat. Like Red says though, there will still be some around. We can't take them with us.

I understand what you guys are saying and I hear that stuff a lot. We are making them better, they are being improved, But gents these are not ford pintos these are items of historical significants at least to me. And as far as there will be plenty around keep in mind what is here today is all that will ever be. Everyone that is broken, altered, changed is one less in circulation. Its one less that will ever exist again.

I can relate to what Doc is saying, I have a ivory scaled 7 day set with original grinding marks and beautiful spinework, but 3 of the scales have issues, I originally intended to have them all rescaled, but they date to the 1880's and I just cant bring myself to alter their original design or historical value so I shave with them as they are

Originally Posted by oldfat1

I would like to see a data base of the razors as they were. So that in the future people will now what they looked like.

Well, we've got some 472 razors in here: Category:Straight Razor Database - Straight Razor Place Wiki - and none of them should be rescaled or reground.

Originally Posted by oldfat1

I'm thinking about cars here, we all see Ford Model A's with V8's in them. Disc brakes, 9 inch rear ends etc.Very few will ever see a real Model A. But to the real car guys, some will restore them as close as they can to original.

I must admit that some of the rescales I've seen here remind me of ricers, but as long as people love them, that's fine.

Originally Posted by oldfat1

I would like to see the restoration guys make an effort to show what it was. While the other guys show what it could be.

Indeed! I wish people would put their razors in the SRDB in their original states before enhancing them with coloured plastic, or worse.

Regards,
Robin

P.S. Anyone got a spare set of original scales for a W&B Bow in excellent condition?

Thank you, Doc, for starting this interesting discussion! Everytime I have to deal with a razor whose conditions were altered during its life, I wonder what restoration means. I try to be the most "respectful" as possible, feeling both a sort of pride for being the owner of an object with a very long history and the responsability of having to decide about its future and contribute, in some part, to its life.

Up to now, after asking many things to myself, I don't know what restoration exactly means. Sometimes I find a very old blade of the end of XVIII c. whose scales were substituted 80 years later, in the second half of the XIX century. I think that all what I can do in such cases is trying to read the history of the razor in the best way I can, identify what is older and what is just less old. I'd like to find some very old scales, not impossible if they come with a very dammaged blade, and put those scales on the nice blade of the same period, but probably this isn't restoration. It would be just a new step in the long life of this razor, a different future; also, it would mean a loss of information about its past.

I think that future generations will have data enough to trace a very complete history of razor evolution. Probably this isn't the point. Just an example. I play harpsichord, a keyboard instrument with a very long history starting at the very beginning of XV c. and ending in the first years of XIX c. when the piano became the most comon keyboard instrument in houses. At the same time old-fashioned harpsichords started to be transformed into pianos changing its mechanincs! Makers made no more harpsichord for 100 years and "nobody" played this instrument until 1920's. The first new "harpsichord players", at the beginning of harspichord revival in 1920's, didn't know exaclty how the instrument should be played and they played it exaclty like a piano. The five-century-long tradition of harspichord playing and harpsichord making had been forgot. Some makers started to make new harpsichords, in part with the idea of improving the old ones in part without the knowledge of how an harpsichord was made. Today those new "harpsichords" can't be considered harpsichords: they are a sort of piano modified to sound a bit strange, probably a bit like an harpsichord because strings are plucked instead of hammered. Afters decads of inversigation, today we know much more things about harpsichord and harpsichord playing. We are rediscovering its long tradition just on the base of rare documents of different kind: descriptions, paintings, old "original" instruments, music composed for the instrument, ancient treatises, etc..

Sorry! too long