Thread: Flea market finds. One with ivory?

The one on the right, the Schneider razor, is genuine ivory. The scales will clean nicely with Maaas or Flitz. You can use very thin superglue to glue the ivory but it will always be visible because it has darkened. Many older ivorys caled razors crack like this and the peculiarity is that it's almost always on only one side and only on the wedge pin. After some time I realized that this happens when the razor is jammed into the scales too hard, prying them apart. Something has to give and the side that cracks first at the wedge relieves the pressure, preserving the other side. Any sharp rap or dropping them so they hit spine first, driving the blade into the scales is likely to break them at that pin because the pieces of ivory are wafer thin.

sometimes you will find bone and horn scales cracked in a similar fashion and it's because of the same thing. As a result of this, many people think ivory is very easily cracked, but that's not so. You'll almost always notice that the rest of the scales, including the full opposite scale from the cracked one are quite nice.