Thread: Scale Material - Horn or Shell?

I've moved this here as it was off topic for the Stub-tailed razors club thread.
Recently picked this up, 'Byatt Warrented' probably iro 1790-1810 by shape, although I haven't found anything on the name yet.
Was wondering what the scale material was, it isn't like any of my other horn scales, but not sure it's that similar to shell either.
Colours run from black through to turquoise, with some 'graining' visible, and semi-translucent in areas
Anyway - pictures!

I would guess Horn mostly because of the contours of the scales Guessing from pics is notoriously bad BTW

Much of the of old stuff has quite a bit of translucence in there, I think perhaps much of it was dyed, because as I clean them up I often find hidden translucent spots...

The chatoyancy could be from delaminations - hard to be definite from the photos, but that is my guess. Like Glen I am thinking horn, with a possibility of tortois? The pics on the lightboard kinda reminds me of tortois, whereas the others look like horn. Definately not shell material. All this just my initial thoughts looking at the pics, ofc

Lovely razor btw, great score.

I say horn. The wrinkles, dry cracking and delamination I see are usually a dead give away for horn. Tortoise is always very thin and has a tendency to have small chips around the scales when damaged. If you really want to make sure it's horn, take a needle, heat the pointy tip up and stick it somewhere on the inside of your scales. If it smells like a dead animal or has a horrible stinky smell it's horn.

Looking at the second and third pictures it seems to me that the name is Ryatt and not Byatt... have you tried looking for it?

Originally Posted by Mauri

Looking at the second and third pictures it seems to me that the name is Ryatt and not Byatt... have you tried looking for it?

I'll give that a go - I do know that Byatt is a Lincolnshire surname, putting it in the right region of the UK.

Thank you everyone by the way, just the descriptions of what you would be looking for are really helpful, as I have the razor in front of me reading them