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New latch, who dis?

My favorite part of making this thing was when I ground it down to about the right shape and it was so hot I quenched it, then I tried to drill out the hole.
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Now that I've assembled this one, I see why the latch arm has the tail!

Without the tail, the arm can swing freely back into the blade edge when the razor is closed. With the tail, it should be...

I wasn't expecting the latch arm to have that long tail on it!

Does that catch on the tail of the razor and cause the latch to move around when you open the razor?

It lets you latch the razor into an open position so it can't easily close. It was a whole micro-genre of fidgety, gimmicky mechanisms designed to hold the razor in 'the shaving posture', none of...

A little sneak preview now that I'm to the point where I can do a test fit.

I had some problems in the dyeing process for a complicated sequence of reasons, but the owner of this old Greaves...

What I ended up settling on was a 2 piece resin mold that self registers and a metal frame that I apply the pressure to.

I thought a 1/8" thick steel plate framed with 1/4" hot rolled angle bar...

In this case, it was a supreme degree of annoyance. The initial tests worked really well... Then for months, everything I did failed. And not just failed, but did nothing. I had to know why.

After literal months of failure, I've finally nailed it down. It's just slow!

For the set of scales I'm making (which is for a restoration), I'm not doing anything to speed up the process because...

I've spent the last ... 5 months? developing a technique to do pressed horn scales. Heat plays a role, but it's primarily a chemical method.

Once I've got a functional set of scales (I'm still...

The SB part is a mystery!

But yeah, I think it was just a monstrous razor. Being from 1840ish, it was probably originally branded DUTCH RATTLER. Definitely didn't have that particular style hollow...

Well. THAT’s a monster! Is the other side flat?

In any event, Muntz & Co weren’t around long. They showed up in this 1841 directory and then again in 1849 and that’s it. Looks like they were...

Last night I found this stuff, prolly sometime in the next couple of weeks I'm gonna buy some and see if that'll work for this purpose as well as making tools to form washers (I assume it's not...

I assume that those pieces would be light enough, and the resin viscous enough, that the metal would need to be fixed in place somehow to not get pushed around a little by the pour, that's why I was...

I’m not sure if I’m finished with this or not.

The bevel is wider than I’d like, and it’s really tempting to toss some 80 grit paper on my drum sander and do a light regrind.

On the other hand,...

Once I'm sure about this incredibly slow curing resin being viable for scales (not too flexible, not too brittle), I'm gonna give it a shot.

My intuition is I can put a skin coat into the mold,...

I'm workin' on it. :P

Also, as a result of this conversation I just discovered that you can buy dental epoxies through ebay (of course). And the comments are full people doing dentistry on themselves.

That is indeed one of the sources I was thinking of. I also remember Neil mentioning it.

As it turns out, I have some sufficiently broken ivory scales and phosphoric acid.

The other option, I...

I got it all working (machine oil worked fine to prevent sticking).

Unfortunately, the epoxy I was using just wasn't up to the task. There are some which *are*, but I'm just gonna learn to use a...

I think bone and ivory just get brittle when you heat them. If you want them to get flexible, you've got to chemically treat them.

(I am 70% certain the vast majority of fancy ivory scales were...

With horn scales, I just bake the razor and scales in the toaster oven at 210 degrees for 45 minutes. Fixes'em right up!

Yeah. That was the last thing I tried -- just a drop of machine oil. It worked well! I've got both a male and a female set curing now.

Next stop: the storage unit to see if I can find my box of...

275748

I am apparently in FBU mode. I've only got three more behind this one.

Also, I'm just making a lot of scales lately, after a very long time of resenting needing to manually shape the...

The technique I describe for flattening warped scales works just as well on the blanks.
...

So... Will you mind terribly if I bring some razors up to visit? I've got some that desperately need regrinding, and I gotta start somewhere!