3 Attachment(s)
Almost everything you ever wanted to know about working with horn scales.
First and foremost, I never would have done any of of the things I describe in this post if it weren't for discussions and encouragement from my friends here.
In particular, Neil Miller's excellent posts about historical horn dyeing lead directly to my recent dye experiments.
The scale vise technique I'll discuss is a slightly modified version of what Wolfpack34 uses.
And finally, my method for centering a problematic razor came as a result of discussions with Wolfpack34 and 10Pups while sitting around and talking razor stuff. It was generally considered to be crazy.
Now, without further ado:
Fun tricks with horn: flattening warped scales!
One of the most common problems you'll run into with old horn scales is bad warping.
Using this method, it's possible to flatten even badly warped scales.
Here's a picture of what I use:
Attachment 187505
In the picture are three long strips of relatively thick aluminum bar, two bolts, some pieces of steel bar used as spacers, large washers, nuts, and some strips of cardboard from a box of soda.
It all gets sandwiched together like this:
Attachment 187506
The horn scales are placed with the inward facing surface flat on the aluminum. I put two strips of cardboard on top of that, then the next layer of aluminum bar, the other scale, more cardboard, etc.
Here's where the ideas at work are useful to understand.
We're going to be baking this.
The goal is not to exert a great deal of pressure on the scales -- doing that would put dents in them. Instead, it's to use just enough pressure to get them to lay flat. The steel spacers are doing most of the work here, and the cardboard provides a little bit of 'soft pressure'. It won't press into the scales, but it will provide just a little bit of extra-gentle pressure.
Once it's sandwiched, I bolt the whole thing together, like this:
Attachment 187507
After that, I take the whole vise and put it in my toaster oven. I set the temperature to 240 degrees, turn on convection and run it on a 10 minute timer. I suspect this works best if you put the vise and scales in while the oven is heating so that it's brought to-temp a little more gradually.
240 degrees (that's Fahrenheit) isn't significantly warmer than boiling water. My automatic hot water pot for coffee and tea dispenses water at 220. It's not hot enough to scorch the paper.
But it is hot enough to make the horn a little more plastic.
Once I take it out of the toaster oven, I put it immediately into the freezer for a some variable amount of time. Working on the 'for a while' principle, basically I take it out of the freezer when I remember to -- typically about 2 hours later.
Then I let it sit for 12-24 hours at room temperature before taking the vise apart.
This technique has been effective every time I've used it (probably 10 times now). Occasionally, a set of scales will require a second run through, but none have needed a third (and I've done this to some very badly warped scales).
This technique even works on ornately pressed scales without damaging the design.
3 Attachment(s)
Centering problems? You can't fix it that way, that's crazy!
Fun tricks with horn: correcting centering problems!
Building on the method using the makeshift scale vise, I recently was working on a pair of razors for a friend.
Attachment 187508
I completely disassembled them and flattened both pair of scales, since there was some relatively significant warping.
Unfortunately, that warping wasn't limited to the scales. One of the razors had a little jump to the left in the tang, so it actually centered worse with straight scales1.
This seemed like the perfect opportunity to set sail for uncharted waters. I asked Eisenfaust (whose razors these are), if it was okay to perform a daring experiment and he trusted me to go through with it.
Here's what I did.
Attachment 187509
Using the same microfasteners I'd used for temporary assembly, I mounted the whole, assembled razor onto one of the aluminum bars of my scale vise by drilling two holes for the microfasteners. I tightened it down good and guided the razor closed.
Attachment 187513
Then I baked the entire razor at 220 for 10 minutes, then put it directly in the freezer, just like I'd have done with a pair of scales.
Taking it out of the freezer presented a new problem. It obviously frosted over quite significantly. I solved that by gently heating it with a hair-dryer and padding it down with paper towels.
At the end of all this, I had a razor that centered very nicely. From there it was just an issue of re-pinning and everything worked great. (Also, the razor was in no way hurt by the temperature)
- Kids, always test assemble using microfasteners before committing the pins with a hammer, that's how you learn these things!
6 Attachment(s)
Fun tricks with horn: DYES!
Fun tricks with horn: re-dyeing old mockshell!
After all the work I'd done on that pair photographed above, the original dye-job had lost some of its punch. I'm sure you've seen lots of old mockshell horn with faint, ancient spots. Sometimes they're white (see Neil's links above for what's going on there).
Here's how Eisenfaust's razors looked:
Attachment 187512
After sanding and polishing, the original dyed spots were pretty badly faded. He asked me if there was anything I could do about that, which reminded me of Neil's posts. I determined to try some commercial hair dye.
I experimented on some scrap, honey horn and I liked the results. Here's what I did.
Attachment 187514
My assumption is that pretty much any permanent hair dye will work. My first tests were done with different stuff, but it worked just as well (but was too light a color). For these razors, I wanted the spots to be very dark but not quite black (hence the brown-black dye).
Note also the absolutely amazing weasel-marketing on that box: "With Ingredients of a Natural Origin".
As opposed to all those other hair dyes that're using chemical compounds delivered from an alternate universe by eldritch magics.
Ahem.
These hair kits have two components, kind of like epoxy. They all tell you to mix the two components in an included container then completely coat your hair in it. That's obviously not going to work so well for our purposes.
Both kits also mix the two components in equal volumes, which makes things nice and easy. For both sets of scales I didn't need much dye at all.
First though, I polished the scales and wiped them down good.
Then I mixed up the dye in equal parts (basically a gloopy drop about the size of an American quarter). I used one of the applicator bottles that came with a kit, but you can really use anything that's not precious and will hold a little goopy dye. To mix it up, I used an old paint brush, which I then also used to apply it.
Attachment 187516
Art comes into it here, and it's best to do some tests to get a feel for how it works.
Old Sheffield mockshell is hugely variable in quality. Some is an extraordinary simulation of tortoiseshell, others are... Shall we say, less convincing?
These razors were kind of in the middle, and I mostly wanted to restore them to how they'd looked before. But that still included both spots with sharp edges and wispy bits that trailed and looped around.
So I first blobbed on the dye, then used the hard end of my paintbrush to thin it out in places or make fine lines of dye.
The end result was this:
Attachment 187521
Attachment 187519
The dye instructions tell you to leave it in your hair for half an hour. For the horn, I left it on for a full hour working on the theory that the material had a little farther to go to be in any danger of split ends. I washed off the dye with warm water and dried them with a paper towel.
The color is very durable. At least as durable as the original dye job, since both sets of scales went under the buffer before I took those pictures.
Out of curiosity, I also tested the dye on some ornately pressed scales (which originally had mockshell dye).
Attachment 187520
