Thread: Leather scales what would it take?

The type of leather used for those old (and not so old) razor scales was termed 'cuir bouilli' - literally boiled leather. It was used for copious numbers of razors - I guess I have 20 or more sets that I have removed and replaced with new scales. Of those 20+ sets of scales i would say that most are in very good condition indeed, some are in excellent condition, and some are really soft, bendy and quite useless.

In the middle ages a lot of armour was made using hard leather produced by this process.

It was boiled in order to reach certain temperatures. At one stage the physical structure of the leather would remain virtually the same, at which point it was removed with tongs and either pressed or hammered flat, and used to sole boots.

Letting the temperature get a little higher and the matrix of the leather began to flow, at which stage it was removed and pressed in cast iron preheated presses, with any number of plates that cut it to shape and/or decorated the surface. Normally there was just a slight rebate (lower) area around the edges. The heated cast iron presses and plates were liberally daubed with tallow grease, which mixed with the surface of the leather, providing a deep penetrating protective layer.

With the higher heats the scales, if well preserved, tend to look a bit like hard rubber, and the texture of the product is very evenly grained throughout, except at the surface, which was very smooth.

Other unlikely materials were used too, such as horn, which was heated, set in the press and screwed tight, then reheated till it dribbled and was screwed tight once more. These gave very detailed representations of any engraving done on the steel 'shaper' plates, you often see such scales on very early razors, with straight(ish - they tapered a bit) scales rather than curved ones.

Even more unlikely is the use at around the same period of plain wood, thouroghly soaked through, heated and subjected to the press to recieve all sorts of patterns, but simpler patterns than on horn scales - wood tends to craze and raise its grain ends a bit to take very intricate details.

Regards,
Neil

Does the use of pressed leather go back to Roman times - or is that just Cecil B deMills imagination?

I messed around with this a few years ago. I tried to stabilize the leather in a pressure pot. That did not work because the pressure closed up the cells. I think it is time for me to contact Skipnord and ask him to try stabilizing some leather in his vacuum pot with his gorilla juice then putting them in a press after that to harden.
It would be cool to have someone like hidestoart do some stamping/engraving then have them stabilized.

I know this is leather specific but im wondering if a synthetic leather layered would be a better solution .. I would think having it sewn on the edges and being synthetic would make it sturdy enough as well as being stable for the long run ..