Thread: Unknown scale material

I am fairly new to all this, and have worked with old horn scales, and a few celluloid. This material is new to me and i am wondering what approach i should take. This is from an ERN DUOCON razor. The scales almost look black in room lighting, but up to the window with the sun coming through and they truly come to life. Magnificent light browns swirling throughout the scales. They are a little warped so i would like to be able to save them. Any advice on what the material is would be helpful. Im debating sending it off to a pro, especially if they are rare. Thanks for the help.

I would not be surprised if that's tortoiseshell that's very dirty. Try a high grit paper on the inside to see what comes off.

First thing that came to mind was not tortoise... But if it's indeed the case, that would be, yes, quite a find, something to treasure. (damn, I have a blade that would fit that lovely )

Careful though, there is another candidate that could fool even trained eyes, and that would be tinted horn. But anyway, these seem to be very nice scales

so here are some pics of the blade. It has some light rust spots, but nothing too serious. I have done some google searches and come up completely empty as far as finding another one. Could it be that it is indeed a rare razor? the grind is very interesting to say the least. Also the stampings are unlike any i have ever seen. any thought?

I think humbly that I have seen my fair share of ERN.
As I said, I too have a very nice one.

Yet, never seen anything alike.
ERN is already a top brand IMHO, this only pushes further the idea I have of the quality they could reach

E[QUOTE=Aggelos;1410643]I think humbly that I have seen my fair share of ERN.
As I said, I too have a very nice one.

Yet, never seen anything alike.
ERN is already a top brand IMHO, this only pushes further the idea I have of the quality they

Yea even if it's not real tortoise, I think I made out pretty good. I just did the hot pin test on the inside of the scales, and it didn't smell like burning hair. However, it didn't really smell like chemicals either. I would say it didnt really have any smell at all. I did read that if it is real it is common to darken over time, which could be the case here. I guess I'll have to let a pro take a look to find out for sure. I want to know now! Lol the suspense is killing me. Here's the ebay item number
171510183108

Well, burnt hair smell would have hinted to horn chiefly, you may actually have found "the one"
I'm actually quite happy for you

"Here's the ebay item number
171510183108"

That's a great deal. I'm a fan of Ern razors and I've not seen one like it. It's a good thing I didn't see it on eBay. It could have gotten ugly. Congrats on a beautiful razor.

No tortoise in my opinion, but a nice set of black horn scales.

The blade is quite uncommon, beautiful razor

Edit : a good thread about tortoise or not tortoise :

http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...oiseshell.html

Definitely not tortoise - I have had similar sets.

They did a number of variations, including blue-mottled and red-mottled, some with the sword design in gold foil, none of them precious or semi precious materials. Each of these variants was some sort of man-made plastic or resin, neither tortoise, hard rubber nor horn.

Ern tended to use the darker, single colours of hard rubber, especially black, up to around the 1930s, so I suppose the use of resins, xylonite and celluloid were confined to the early 1900s - 1950s.

I would suspect they are synthetic - the hot pin test would give the same result for either horn of tortoise, and real tortoise they are almost certainly not.

You can tell that the material has been cast/vacuum formed by the scale-dais set onto the inner surface of each sclae and the presence of the metal foil instead of a cast design. They are a higher-end scale.


Regards,
Neil