Thread: Spanish Razor - got Goins?

Was wondering if anyone with more reference material than me could find anything on a Spanish straight-maker I just bought off of JunkBay. Even in the blurry images, it looks like it's in rough shape, but possibly restorable...anyhoo:

I actually gleaned a bit of wisdom from google on this razor--"N. Vda de Gesse" means "Nietos vuida Gesse" or Grandchildren of Gesse. "Esparteros 6" is the street address in Madrid, where the storefront still stands. Oscar Gesse took it over from his grandfather, Nicolas Gesse, a French immigrant blademaker.

My questions: any ideas when this might have been made? Is that real mother-of-pearl or faux? What kind of steel was likely used?

Any help would be appreciated. Also, if anybody has a favorite technique for cleaning these up, please post it. I made the collossal mistake of boiling a few this weekend and destroyed a beautiful NM Edaco. It felt like losing a loved one...depending on which loved one, maybe worse

why on earth would you boil them? Well, done is done, but they might still be restored by some of the guys on here who have more experience with it. I recall seeing a thread where somebody made a jig to hold the scales flat for straightening.

If you have never done restoration work before, I would HIGHLY recommend sending these off to one of the professionals here. Especially if they mean so much to you.
Always start off you resto work on junk that you dont care if you screw it up. =) Because chances are, you will! want to see my junk drawer?


Good Luck!

Oh, and its probably celluloid, or maybe plastic. If you really want to know about the age, why not contact the grand son, and ask him? Its not often a family member of a blade maker is still available to question!

Good idea about contacting the store! And yeah, I boiled them because I'm a complete idiot. If you google things like "how to clean a straight razor," etc., you find at least 3 pages (I think one is on Ask.com) that recommend boiling with salt and baking soda. Of course, this is a great formula for instant rust (heat+water+salt), but for some reason I thought they wouldn't recommend it if it wasn't a semi-good idea. Two of the razors were broken junk already, but the Edaco came out with a huge chip...you'd have to hone it halfway up the blade to repair. Live and learn. I'll be ordering Bill Ellis's cd today.

Argh!

I'd hazard those scales as Acrylic, maybe celluloid... Definitely not MOP... In fact, I'd call the pattern Cracked Ice over Faux MOP... Check out the classifieds, if the Dubl Duck Goldedge is still posted there, compare it's scales to yours (the DD GE has some high quality pictures)... If they're similar, then you have Cracked Ice on your hands... A beautiful scale making material, in my opinion