Thread: Question for Restorers....Thin scales

I have sourced a faux tortoise material used in making guitar picks and decorative pieces for instruments. It apparently VERY thin... guitar pick thin.... Would that thickness work for scales? I have owned ivory scales that were very thin. Your thoughts?

Can you give us a measurement of the thickness. Are we talking 0.010 or 0.060 thickness? If they are very very thin just use a liner.

Max.... the material is .035 thickness.... the company is Turtleworks TOR-TIS

Originally Posted by Maximilian

Can you give us a measurement of the thickness. Are we talking 0.010 or 0.060 thickness? If they are very very thin just use a liner.

Im looking to replicate as close as possible the genuine tortoise look gor a pair of MK31's

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5046/...866431b3_b.jpg

My understanding is that the Tor-TIS stuff is too flexible for scales, which is too bad because it's a really good fake tortoise.

Unhelpfully, I have no links handy, but there are a couple of other options.

Alternatively, you could look for old shoehorns or broken fans made with the real-deal and salvage some.

Edited to add:

Luckily, those MK 31's are petite razors, so the amount of material needed isn't punishing.

You know... As I think about this, I think there might be a good solution to the problem of the Tor-TIS material being so soft. A very thin lucite liner, bonded to the back with clear resin.

.035 is a bit on the thin side and I don't know the material well enough to comment how it flexes and what the strength is. I could work but being so thin you would have to use a very fine toothed saw and drill your pivot hole carefully in fear of cracking or chipping. I would just use a liner.

Masecraft carries two different patterned Tortoise Polyesters aka works like Acrylic at 1/8" or .125" thickness you can of course thin that down also,,, I have personally taken it down to .090 for scales below that you will have to let us know You will want to order the 8x10 size so you can chose the direction you want to cut the scale blanks.. The 4x10 can only be cut one way and that might not be the look you are after

Decorative Polyester Sheets

Thanks guys! I was just trying to source a nice dark tortoise that is close to these
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5046/...866431b3_b.jpg

NOT doing the work myself. Will employ a craftsman... just picky about color and thickness...

I've been looking at this material too and my thread didn't turn up any answers that you don't already have, I like Voidmonster's lucite liner idea.

Here it is if there's any interest
http://straightrazorpalace.com/forge...-material.html